Page 2 The Skanner August 10, 2016
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Challenging People to Shape
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Opinion
Complicating Our Country’s Racial Narrative
B
ryan Stevenson, the
brilliant founder and
Executive Director of
the Equal Justice Ini-
tiative, believes it’s possible
to change our nation and
world despite the inequality
and violence that sometimes
threaten to overwhelm us. He
speaks oten about the urgent
need to confront our historic
narrative including recent-
ly to young servant leaders
preparing to teach children
in Children’s Defense Fund
Freedom Schools® programs
across America.
“There is a narrative that
explains how we got here.
Mass incarceration was cre-
ated by policy decisions. We
decided to deal with drug ad-
diction and drug dependency
as a crime issue rather than a
health issue . . . We didn’t do
that for alcoholism. We said,
‘Alcoholism, that’s a disease,’
and now we don’t have a con-
sciousness that when we see
an alcoholic going into a bar
that we have to call the police -
but we didn’t do that for drug
addiction. The reason why we
didn’t do that was because of a
narrative. And there’s a nar-
rative of fear and anger out
there.”
He continued: “You see,
there’s a smog that’s hovering
in the air. It’s a pollution cre-
ated by our history of racial
inequality . . . We’ve got to talk
Marian
Wright
Edelman
Children’s
Defense
Fund
about the fact that we are a
post-genocidal society. There
was a genocide on this con-
tinent. When White settlers
came, they killed millions of
Native people. It was a geno-
cide where famine and war
and disease destroyed a whole
culture, and there are things
“
of American slavery was the
ideology of White supremacy
that we made up to legitimate
the way we treated people of
color, and we didn’t deal with
that . . . And because of that, I
don’t think slavery ended in
1865. I think it just evolved.
It turned into decades of ter-
rorism and violence. And
we’ve got to deal with what it’s
turned into.
“From the end of Recon-
struction until World War
II, people of color were ter-
rorized, pulled out of their
homes, lynched, burned alive,
taken from jails, hanged, shot.
We’ve got to talk about the fact that
we are a post-genocidal society
you have to do to recover
from genocide that we haven’t
done. And because we didn’t
deal with that, we created this
narrative of racial diference
that allowed us to tolerate
slavery.
“And when we talk about
slavery, we have to under-
stand what we’re talking
about. I don’t think the great
evil of American slavery was
involuntary servitude and
forced labor. I think the great
evil of American slavery was
the narrative of racial dif-
ference that we created to
legitimate it. The great evil
Older people of color come up
to me sometimes and say, ‘Mr.
Stevenson, I get angry when I
hear somebody on TV talking
about how we’re dealing with
domestic terrorism for the
irst time in our nation’s his-
tory ater 9/11.’
“They say, ‘We grew up
with terrorism. We had to
worry about being bombed
and lynched every day of our
lives,’ and we’ve got to tell that
story.
“When I look at this coun-
try, I look at a country whose
demographic geography was
shaped by terror. The Black
people that are in Cleveland
and Chicago and Detroit —
those of you who live in these
cities in the North and West,
you need to understand how
you got there. The Black peo-
ple in New York and Boston
and Cleveland and Chicago
and Detroit and Los Angeles
and Oakland didn’t go to those
communities as immigrants
looking for new economic
opportunities. They came to
these communities as refu-
gees and exiles from terror
in the American South. And
there are things you’re sup-
posed to do for refugees that
we didn’t do, and that turned
into this era of segregation.
“And I have to tell you, I
think we have to change the
narrative of how we think
and talk about civil rights . . . I
hear people talking about the
Civil Rights Movement, and it
sounds like a three-day carni-
val: On Day One, Rosa Parks
didn’t give up her seat on a
bus. On Day Two, Dr. King led
a march on Washington, and
on Day Three, we changed all
the laws and racism was over.
And we’ve got to change that
narrative. Because the truth
is that for decades in this
country, we had segregation,
and segregation was brutal...
My parents were humiliated
every day of their lives.”
Read the full story at
TheSkanner.com
Even Funerals are Not Family Reunions Anymore
M
ost of the relatives
on my mother’s side
migrated from Tusca-
loosa, Ala. to Johnson
City, Tenn., where my oldest
aunt, Julia Mae Cousin, es-
tablished roots ater she was
married. Growing up, I di-
vided my summers between
Johnson City and Reform,
Ala., where my father’s rela-
tives are anchored.
Because I spent so much
time with my cousins, we
have always enjoyed a strong
bond, stronger than some
brothers and sisters. And be-
cause we were closer in age, I
spent most of the early years
romping the streets of John-
son City with Aunt Julia Mae’s
kids - Hattie, D.D., Charles and
Little Buddy. My cousin, Ber-
tha Mae, was almost a decade
older and she was more like
an aunt than a cousin.
With her strong personali-
ty and huge heart, Aunt Julia
urged her siblings to move
to this small, east Tennessee
town, near the Virginia-Ten-
nessee border. Over the years,
a parade of uncles and aunts
acquiesced: Uncle Frank, Un-
cle Buddy, Uncle Percy, Uncle
Padna (Jesse) and Aunt Kat.
Mama (Martha L. Brownlee)
and Big Mama (Sylvia Harris)
were the holdouts, preferring
to stay in Tuscaloosa but mak-
ing frequent trips to Johnson
George E.
Curry
NNPA
Columnist
City.
No one loved going to John-
son City more than I did. By
day, I lived at the Carver Rec
Center with D.D., Charles and
Little Buddy and at night, Hat-
“
Uncle Percy, who perfected
lying to an art form. Uncle
Buddy, a Navy veteran who in-
troduced me to world travel,
was easy-going and fun. But
he should have known better
than to wear red socks to the
reunion one year. As expect-
ed, we lit into him, accusing
him of everything from hav-
ing been cut on the ankles to
working for the Red Cross.
The next year, the irst thing
Uncle Buddy did was raise the
legs of his pants to show us he
(Katherine Madison).
I had already been close to
Uncle Frank’s children, espe-
cially the older ones - LuLu,
Dosha, Doris, Carolyn, Alber-
ta, Knuck and Herman - be-
cause he held out a long time
before moving from Tuscalo-
osa to Johnson City.
Over the years, the family
elders died - Big Mama, Aunt
Kat, Uncle Frank, Uncle Per-
cy, Uncle Padna and, most
recently, Aunt Julia Mae,
who took over as head of the
At my cousin Charlene’s funeral last week, family rela-
tions had deteriorated to the point where it was obvious
that funerals can no longer be used as family reunions
tie would take me to one of
the Black clubs. There was a
rough one up on Wilson Ave-
nue, but we knew to stay away
from there unless Hattie and I
had been dispatched by Aunt
Julia Mae to look for Uncle
Frank.
For the younger members
of the family, nothing was
more popular than our fam-
ily reunions that featured us
cracking jokes on one anoth-
er. Aunt Julia warned us each
year not to showcase our com-
ical side, which was consider-
able, and this was the one time
we brazenly disobeyed.
Everyone had a story about
was wearing black socks.
When he was only 4 or 5
years old, Hattie’s son Robbie
surprised everyone by go-
ing to the front of the room
and cracking on his mother.
Hattie gave Robbie a look
that only Hattie can give, but
it was too late — Robbie had
brought the house down. His
brother, Phill, was accused of
bringing a rent-a-date to one
reunion.
Through those family re-
unions and hot summers, I
grew closer to my younger
cousins: Lynn, Phill, Robbie,
Charlene, Audrey, Albert, Re-
gina, Greg, the twins (Ronald
and Randall), and “Suzie Q”
family upon the death of Big
Mama. With each passing,
the reunions became fewer
and fewer, to the point that we
don’t hold them anymore.
In recent years, I have said
family funerals have become
our family reunions. I told
it as a joke, but it was the
painful truth. At my cousin
Charlene’s funeral last week,
family relations had deteri-
orated to the point where it
was obvious that funerals can
no longer be used as family
reunions. But as long as I have
breath in me, I am going to try
to get my family back togeth-
er. I owe that to Big Mama and
Aunt Julia Mae to keep trying.
