White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son (28 page)

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Authors: Tim Wise

Tags: #History, #Politics, #Sociology, #Memoir, #Race

BOOK: White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son
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But best of all was a recording from February 1986, in which Duke had discussed strategy with an open Nazi by the name of Joe Fields. While Fields had no problem proclaiming his devotion to Hitler, to whom he referred as the “ultimate” role model for whites, Duke cautioned him to be careful, because “if they can call you a Nazi and make it stick . . . it’s going to hurt.” Although Duke noted it was “unfortunate it’s like that” (in other words, it’s a shame people can’t just openly embrace Nazism), he counseled Fields to “leave his options open” when it came to being so brazen about his views. Finally, when Fields exclaimed that “Hitler started with seven men,” Duke chimed in, excitedly noting, “And don’t you think it can happen right now, if we put the right package together?” When Fields again insisted that he would never deny he was a Nazi, Duke ended by saying, “I wheedle out of it because I’m a pragmatist.”
Although the audio quality on the recordings wasn’t spectacular—they had been made on cassette tapes, which by then were four to five-years-old—I took them to a recording studio at Xavier University, where the background noise was taken out and the audio quality boosted, thereby leaving us with a clear articulation, not only of Duke’s extremism in his own words, but also his
admission
that he was conning everyone into believing he had changed. We turned the recordings into radio commercials which ran on hundreds of stations across the state, and planted the story in virtually every print outlet in Louisiana. The state Democratic Party picked up on the recordings too, running TV ads featuring Duke’s comments in the final weeks of the campaign.
There was no question by election night that Duke would lose. The only real issue was, as with the Senate race, how resounding a defeat could be handed to him. Although the result was better than that from the previous year—Edwards prevailed by a 61–39 margin—the victory for the saner forces in our state was dampened once again by the vote tally among whites. Although we had managed to help pare off a few percentage points of Duke’s white support, he had still managed to capture nearly 55 percent of all white votes cast. In other words, most whites in Louisiana had been perfectly prepared to elect a Nazi as Governor of the state. As had been true in the previous election, black folks had saved us from ourselves, turning out to the polls in record numbers to defeat Duke, and to defeat white racism.
The two anti-Duke campaigns had been eye-openers. On the one hand, I knew that most whites in Louisiana were not Nazis, or overt racists who believed in the creation of a master race or the carving up of the United States into distinct racial sub-nations. But what I also knew, given the election results, was that most whites were willing to vote for someone who was all of those things. Sitting alone with my thoughts in the days following the election, I was forced to contemplate what that fact meant, not only about white people generally, but for
me,
specifically. After all, as easy as it would have been to become smug in the face of such a thing—to pride oneself on having been enlightened enough and perhaps even evolved enough to know better than to vote for the Nazi—the truth was, there was very little separating me from those six hundred thousand-plus whites who had voted for Duke. I had had one set of experiences growing up that delivered me down a particular path, and they had had a different set of experiences that delivered them down another one. It could easily have gone the other way. I could no more congratulate myself for my insights than I could bash them for their decided lack of the same. These were my people, after all, and if we who aspire to be white allies cannot or will not struggle with our people—as we would hope others would struggle with us (and often have)—then who is going to do it?
One thing I knew at that moment was that it wasn’t the job of people of color to fix us; it was
our
job. It was on us to practice that “personal responsibility” about which we so readily preach to people of color. It was time for self-help.
AFTER THE GOVERNOR’S
race, the Coalition went through another financial implosion, as contributions dried up, the job of defeating Duke seemingly accomplished. That the name of our organization was the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism, and not David Duke
per se
, always seemed to escape some people. Getting folks to see racism as a broader matter was often a struggle, so much easier as it was to remain fixated on the blatantly obvious example of bigotry dominating the news cycle. As contributions flatlined I was laid off again, but would be brought back within a few weeks as Duke, unbowed by his two defeats, announced he was going to run for President and would enter the Super Tuesday primaries in the South, in March 1992.
We went back to work, making sure that media across the region understood what the Louisiana media had come to realize; namely, that Duke was a white supremacist not merely in his past but also in his present. The effort was hardly needed. Not only did most everyone know by now, but any concerted anti-Duke effort was superfluous by the spring of ’92. Duke’s luster was gone, less because his brand of politics was passé—far from it—but because his thunder was being actively stolen by Pat Buchanan, who became the voice and embodiment of white resentment for the presidential race: a political commentator without the Klan baggage, and a member in good standing of the conservative cognitariat. Buchanan pushed all the same buttons as Duke—the anger over affirmative action, crime, immigration, and welfare moms—but he did it without the obvious ties to extremist groups that had characterized Duke’s entire adult life. By Super Tuesday, Duke was relegated to pulling double digits in only one state, Mississippi. Meanwhile, Buchanan had already stormed forward in places like New Hampshire, stealing from what the columnist himself described as Duke’s “winning playbook” of issues. David had been out-Duked, beaten at his own game.
In the larger social sense, Duke’s electoral demise was a huge victory for antiracist forces, and never has anyone been so grateful for having worked himself out of a job as I was in that moment. That said, I
had
indeed worked myself out of a job. Little did I know that it would be a while before I really had another one.
Unemployed and uncertain as to what I might do next, I could hardly put up much of a fight when Nicol got offered a job in Houston and decided to take it. Though I couldn’t imagine living in Texas, I was in no position to argue the point, and so in April of 1992 we packed our things into a large U-Haul truck and headed off to the only place capable of making New Orleans look temperate.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
 
WE HAD ONLY
been in Houston for a little over two weeks when Los Angeles went up in flames. On April 29, 1992, a jury in Simi Valley, California, acquitted the four white officers who had beaten Rodney King in the aftermath of the now-infamous high-speed chase the previous year. As word spread of their acquittal, South Central Los Angeles exploded. With no job, I sat and watched the drama unfold on television by the hour, the story being one of the first to receive virtually twenty-four-hour news coverage for days on end. Images of neighborhoods engulfed in smoke and fire sent shock waves through the nation. Folks who had enjoyed the luxury of ignoring the rage of the dispossessed were now having to stare it dead in the face, and they were none too happy with what they were seeing. The black and Latino communities of L.A. had reached their boiling point, having seen far too much police corruption and brutality go unpunished over the years (and by the mid-90s even more evidence would emerge about police illegality on an epic scale in the city’s Ramparts division). Though most of white America couldn’t understand the anger, it was only privilege that allowed such obliviousness.
Much was made by commentators and the public of the horrific attack on Reginald Denny, a white truck driver, by four black men at the corner of Florence and Normandie avenues. Denny was pulled from his truck and beaten—a cinder block smashed onto his head—in full sight of helicopter cameras, the scene playing out for millions to witness during the live coverage. The viciousness of the attackers was, to some, evidence of black barbarity and criminality—this would be the take of Pat Buchanan, for instance, who would use the riots as a political chit during his presidential bid. Interestingly, and in keeping with the way in which people are so quick to find evidence to suit their pre-existing biases (and ignore that which contradicts them), few seemed to notice the decency and heroism of the two African American men (Bobby Green, Jr. and Rev. Bennie Newton) who came to the defense of Denny and another of the mob’s victims, Fidel Lopez. While the negative acts of four black men were somehow evidence of a larger group flaw, the positive acts of the other two black men were taken to mean nothing in the opposite direction.
By the time our first month in Houston was done, I was sure I was going to lose my mind. I still couldn’t find work, and except for excellent food and a decent nightlife—we would go to the city’s gay dance clubs, mostly because Nicol didn’t have to worry about getting hit on, and I could gauge my fashion sense by the extent to which I
did
—it was tough to find much to like about Harris County. Furthermore, as national events unfolded in which race was clearly implicated, I realized how much I missed working on matters of racial equity, and how important the subject matter had become to my understanding not only of the nation, but also of myself.
Then one day in mid-May, I answered a phone call that would, in a number of ways, change my life. On the other end was a producer for a new syndicated television show based in Boston, who had been told to contact me about appearing on an upcoming broadcast. She had gotten my number from Lance, who thought I might be perfect for an episode in which the host, Jane Whitney, would have a former Klan family on as guests, as well as a husband and wife who were still active members of the group. I would serve as the expert on the white supremacist movement. Initially, she had contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Alabama, to see if someone from the group would appear on the show, but SPLC’s policy is never to appear opposite racists and thereby give them more credibility than they deserve. Though I understood that logic, I also knew the show was going to proceed, with or without an antiracist analyst on the panel. Rather than leave it up to the host to know how to respond to the Klan members, I figured it was better to have someone do it who knew something about them.
Though I was skittish about the way talk shows typically dealt with these subjects—with good reason, since it had only been four years earlier that the infamous skinhead fight on
Geraldo
had broken out, during which the host had suffered a broken nose—I decided to do the show. Earlier in the year, while still in New Orleans, I had turned down an offer to appear on
Jerry Springer
, fearing the circus atmosphere that was already by that point his hallmark. But this time, something about the way in which Laura, the producer, described the episode, convinced me it could be a legitimate discussion.
I knew something of the ex-Klan family’s story already, having seen the wife and mother, Jan Ralston, the year before on the
Sally Jesse Raphael Show
. She had first appeared as a proud member of one of the most militant and terroristic Klan factions in the country—the Southern White Knights. Rather than the white hoods associated for years with the KKK, the Knights preferred battle fatigues and black berets. But after spewing viciously racist diatribes from the stage, and then seeing the tape of the program provided her by the producers, Jan had experienced something of an epiphany. Shocked by her own demeanor, she had called up Sally’s producers and asked to return to the program, this time to denounce the Klan and announce her decision to leave the organization.
By the time of the
Jane Whitney
appearance, Jan had convinced her husband Gary and two of their children to leave the Klan as well. They would be the primary focus of the show, opposite Ken and Carol Peterson, a Klan couple from Wisconsin. When Laura explained that the Petersons would appear by satellite, rather than live in the studio (because Ken was afraid to fly), I was convinced that my role in the program could be constructive. There was no chance that the show would descend into chair-throwing chaos with the unrepentant racists thousands of miles away.
The studio was outside of Boston, so about an hour and a half before the taping, I came downstairs to the lobby of the Bostonian Hotel, only to find myself face to face with the Ralstons, with whom I would be sharing the limo ride to the network affiliate. Despite knowing that they had left behind the white supremacist movement, I couldn’t help but feel a momentary twinge of anxiety. These were, after all, people who just a year earlier would have wanted me dead.

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