Greg Freeman: It's Hard To See Good In The "Good Ol' Days" Of Segregation. P-D 8/3/1999

Headline: IT'S HARD TO SEE GOOD IN THE "GOOD OL' DAYS" OF SEGREGATION
Reporter: By Greg Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Tues., Aug. 3, 1999
Section: METRO, Page: B1, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

Civil rights and urban myths
   I took a phone call the other day from a woman who told me that Congress was trying to wipe out the Civil Rights Act.
   I asked her where she got her information, and she referred me to an e-mail that she had received. I asked her to forward it to me. When I read it, I realized what it was -- another one of those urban myths.
   According to the e-mail, Congress was considering legislation that would get rid of the rights blacks won in the act. The fact is, there's no truth to it. Congress is considering no such legislation, and reporters who cover Washington say the e-mail's been floating around for a couple of years.
   I called the woman back and told her what I'd learned, but she would have nothing of it. She refused to believe there was nothing to it, and added, "Things are worse for black people now than ever before."

Her comments reflect those of a seemingly growing number of African-Americans who believe that things are getting worse. I don't know how many times I've heard people say that integration made life worse for blacks. More and more I hear from black folks who say things were better 60 years ago, in the days of segregation.

I beg to differ.
I suppose I differ because I enjoy talking with older people and finding out what things were like "back in the day, " as the kids say.
One thing I've learned from those folks is that segregation wasn't nearly as great as some today make it out to be.

It's easy to look back and gloss over the many aspects of segregation.
   Housing discrimination that prevented blacks from living where they might want to live, instead having to look in the newspapers in the "apartments for colored" section.
   Job discrimination that prevented blacks from working for mainstream businesses except in the most menial of positions.
   Even discrimination that prevented blacks from eating at any restaurant.

Today St. Louis has a black mayor, the St. Louis public schools have a black superintendent, and there's an African-American on the St. Louis County Council. Who would have dreamed that any of that could have happened 60 years ago?

To say that things were better before is to ignore all of the hard work that those in the civil rights movement struggled for. It is to say that everything that folks like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, Whitney Young, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner worked so hard for was for naught.
To say that things were better before is to say that the efforts of people like Frankie Freeman and Margaret Bush Wilson and Norman Seay and Marian and Charles Oldham and Bill Clay and Ivory Perry and Percy Green were worthless.

I don't think they were worthless. Because of folks like those, our lives are better. For the most part, today we can live where we want, shop where we want, eat where we want.

Perhaps, after slavery ended, some blacks looked back on how good things were back in the days of slavery. But that doesn't mean that slavery was a good institution. In a similar vein, neither was segregation, no matter how wistfully some may look back on it.

We've still got a long way to go. And while we haven't come nearly as far as some whites would like to think we have, we have come farther than some blacks would like to acknowledge.
But if you never acknowledge progress, how do you maintain credibility? How do you develop alliances if you refuse to admit that some things have gotten better?

Don't get me wrong. Racism is alive and, unfortunately, well in our country, and people should continue battling it.
I suspect some don't like to acknowledge improvements for fear that it will mean letting up on the pressure to change those things that are still wrong.
Still, it might not be a bad idea to talk to some old folks and realize that things really are better than they once were.

As for me, I'm inclined to agree with what a friend's mother once told him: "We ain't what we should be, we ain't what we gonna be, but thank God we ain't what we were."

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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