Racial tensions

Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier ~ racial tensions
Posted by: bojacobs - "A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed." -- Katherine Paterson, Gates of Excellence
Posted on: 02/23/2007 at 2:43pm (194 of 230)

3. According to Sidney, growing up on Cat Island gave him a unique freedom from the racial tensions in other parts of the world. He writes that there were no mirrors in his house or even on the island that he can remember, and that the color of his skin held no more meaning to him than the white sand or the blue sky. What effect do you think this unique childhood had on the development of Sidney's character as an adult? How did your hometown or neighborhood differ from Sidney's? What was the first time you became aware of your race?

I'm from the South, from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to be specific. My mother had a black friend named Cornelia. I remember one day when she was at our house and I was a preschooler, that she and mother laughed when I drew Cornelia's picture. I looked to see what was "wrong" with my picture, but I had drawn a "good" picture of what I saw, dark skin with beautiful white teeth. What was so funny about that? By the time I got married, I knew that whites and blacks didn't mingle socially in the South. I invited Cornelia to the wedding anyway, but she didn't come. Maybe she knew it would cause a problem for other guests. She should have known I would have preferred HER being there than anyone who might object.

All her life, Cornelia felt it was not her place to eat at the table with white folks, not even friends like us who visited back and forth. On the last Christmas before she died, I picked her up at the nursing home and she ate at my house, but she STILL wouldn't eat at the table with us. I remember her with plate balanced on her knees in an easy chair, beaming at my children, my mother, my husband, me. The big grin on her face showed off her still-beautiful teeth, and I loved her. She was very old when she died and very few people came to her funeral. Worst of all, to me, was that mother and I were the only white people there.

My mother was born in Chattanooga and lived here all her life. Both of HER parents were born in the late 1800s near Knoxville, Tennessee. Yet I've always had black friends as well as white. Not all Southerners are bigots. (Thanks, Anne, for pointing that out.) My ex-husband came from "up North" in Pennsylvania, and he didn't want our children in school with blacks. How do we explain that? (Notice I said "ex.") Prejudice is not limited to the South.

~~~ Bonnie