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This story began almost 40 years ago when I was playing music with a couple guys in Europe. I was the only white guy in the group. When we'd cross borders on the trains, the "authorities" would leave me alone and hassle my musical colleagues, even though we all had the same, blue, American passports - all legit. The other guys were from Boston and St Louis. They shared their stories of racism with me. I was asked how I might have turned out if my great, great, great grandfather was a slave. I've been having this "dream" ever since...
A Strange Dream.
I had a strange dream that I was abducted and sold into slavery by marauding people from another State. Yeah “right” I said to myself in the dream. Here I am, a grown white male living peacefully in Western North Carolina at the beginning of the 21st century yet there I was being packed into the hold of an old ship where I was shackled together with several other folks from my little Southern town. Some I knew, some were strangers.
In the dream, after weeks at sea, we finally made land where we were hauled out into a strange port city where the people all looked different and spoke a weird language I’d never heard before. Here, we were all sold at auction to the highest bidders. I bade farewell to my fellow town folk who were also summarily sold and hauled off.
My new “masters” were gruff and like “John Wayne Toilet Paper”, didn’t take any crap off anyone, especially not me and my smart mouth. I was made to toil from sun up to sundown every day with no compensation other than a cold floor on which to sleep and just enough food to keep me alive.
I was beaten if I spoke my own language. I was forbidden to learn how to read or write this “new” language that was being spoken around and about me. If I were ever caught trying to educate myself I was whipped.
Then one day, like magic I was free… a “free” human being once again.
Almost as if a dream within a dream, I found myself in the same region, except time had flashed forward about 50 or 60 years. Now, in this new time frame, I was still considered “free” and I no longer had to toil for the “master”. However I still wasn’t exactly “free” to go anywhere I pleased, or do anything that I wanted. There were still severe limitations on what I could and couldn’t do.
I was most definitely a second class citizen and treated as if I were a red-headed step child (though I’ve got blond hair and I was never a “step” anything). I still found the language thing a bit tricky as no one that looked like me had ever really picked up the lingo either. I guess after all those years of being forbidden to actually learn it properly, mastering this foreign tongue was not coming easily to anyone that resembled me.
I mean, they all tried to mimic the sounds, but it was still a little rough around the edges and we all seemed to simply make do and to be satisfied with communicating amongst ourselves. We couldn’t be bothered with trying to speak any better as the “others” didn’t seem to want us to play in the same sandbox with them anyway.
This was made horribly evident when I would turn a corner and there would be a fellow Western North Carolinian hanging by the end of a rope from an old oak tree.
In my dream I’m thinking: “This is horse hockey!” “When am I going to wake up from this stupid dream?” But like all bad dreams, right when I thought I was waking up, I simply rolled back over and fell back fast asleep… and my dream picked right back up.
Only this time, I had been transported even further into the future… another 30 or 40 years. And like all weird dreams, it got weirder. I found myself a child again – in the most terrifying situation that anyone has ever dreamt… and we’ve all had this dream: I was late to class, and I did not have my homework assignment completed!
As if that weren’t bad enough, I still hadn’t mastered the language and all the teachers and other students looked down on me, bullied me, and made fun of the way I talked and the way I looked. You see, I was still different from most everyone else and no matter what clothes I wore or how I tried to act or mimic the sounds around me, I was still an outcast and tread upon like a cobblestone road with hobnail boots grinding into my very soul.
It's difficult to put yourself in another person's shoes. It's hard for some people to feel empathetic. I'm convinced that some humans simply don't have the capacity to feel empathy for those other than themselves and those in their immediate circle - those in their own tribe. All others, those in other tribes don't count. They are the "others". To be feared, hated, scorned and tread upon.
For me it's terribly sad. I feel sad for all those who don't have it in their DNA to feel empathy for others. But I feel more sad, and I feel more empathy for those who are tread upon only because they speak a different language; or they eat something "different" for breakfast; or they have a different pigmentation or the color of their hair seems strange...
After 40 years, I feel sorry for Larry and Billy - from Boston and St. Louis. Killer musicians both. And the folks in Europe really enjoyed our music back then. But the authorities whose job it was to "control" us as we crossed their frontier... I find it difficult to feel sorry for them. Even though I know they were just "doing their job".
Racism isn't just a dream. It's a reality for a lot of folks on this planet. I've seen it...
A Strange Dream.
I had a strange dream that I was abducted and sold into slavery by marauding people from another State. Yeah “right” I said to myself in the dream. Here I am, a grown white male living peacefully in Western North Carolina at the beginning of the 21st century yet there I was being packed into the hold of an old ship where I was shackled together with several other folks from my little Southern town. Some I knew, some were strangers.
In the dream, after weeks at sea, we finally made land where we were hauled out into a strange port city where the people all looked different and spoke a weird language I’d never heard before. Here, we were all sold at auction to the highest bidders. I bade farewell to my fellow town folk who were also summarily sold and hauled off.
My new “masters” were gruff and like “John Wayne Toilet Paper”, didn’t take any crap off anyone, especially not me and my smart mouth. I was made to toil from sun up to sundown every day with no compensation other than a cold floor on which to sleep and just enough food to keep me alive.
I was beaten if I spoke my own language. I was forbidden to learn how to read or write this “new” language that was being spoken around and about me. If I were ever caught trying to educate myself I was whipped.
Then one day, like magic I was free… a “free” human being once again.
Almost as if a dream within a dream, I found myself in the same region, except time had flashed forward about 50 or 60 years. Now, in this new time frame, I was still considered “free” and I no longer had to toil for the “master”. However I still wasn’t exactly “free” to go anywhere I pleased, or do anything that I wanted. There were still severe limitations on what I could and couldn’t do.
I was most definitely a second class citizen and treated as if I were a red-headed step child (though I’ve got blond hair and I was never a “step” anything). I still found the language thing a bit tricky as no one that looked like me had ever really picked up the lingo either. I guess after all those years of being forbidden to actually learn it properly, mastering this foreign tongue was not coming easily to anyone that resembled me.
I mean, they all tried to mimic the sounds, but it was still a little rough around the edges and we all seemed to simply make do and to be satisfied with communicating amongst ourselves. We couldn’t be bothered with trying to speak any better as the “others” didn’t seem to want us to play in the same sandbox with them anyway.
This was made horribly evident when I would turn a corner and there would be a fellow Western North Carolinian hanging by the end of a rope from an old oak tree.
In my dream I’m thinking: “This is horse hockey!” “When am I going to wake up from this stupid dream?” But like all bad dreams, right when I thought I was waking up, I simply rolled back over and fell back fast asleep… and my dream picked right back up.
Only this time, I had been transported even further into the future… another 30 or 40 years. And like all weird dreams, it got weirder. I found myself a child again – in the most terrifying situation that anyone has ever dreamt… and we’ve all had this dream: I was late to class, and I did not have my homework assignment completed!
As if that weren’t bad enough, I still hadn’t mastered the language and all the teachers and other students looked down on me, bullied me, and made fun of the way I talked and the way I looked. You see, I was still different from most everyone else and no matter what clothes I wore or how I tried to act or mimic the sounds around me, I was still an outcast and tread upon like a cobblestone road with hobnail boots grinding into my very soul.
It's difficult to put yourself in another person's shoes. It's hard for some people to feel empathetic. I'm convinced that some humans simply don't have the capacity to feel empathy for those other than themselves and those in their immediate circle - those in their own tribe. All others, those in other tribes don't count. They are the "others". To be feared, hated, scorned and tread upon.
For me it's terribly sad. I feel sad for all those who don't have it in their DNA to feel empathy for others. But I feel more sad, and I feel more empathy for those who are tread upon only because they speak a different language; or they eat something "different" for breakfast; or they have a different pigmentation or the color of their hair seems strange...
After 40 years, I feel sorry for Larry and Billy - from Boston and St. Louis. Killer musicians both. And the folks in Europe really enjoyed our music back then. But the authorities whose job it was to "control" us as we crossed their frontier... I find it difficult to feel sorry for them. Even though I know they were just "doing their job".
Racism isn't just a dream. It's a reality for a lot of folks on this planet. I've seen it...
