White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son (29 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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I nervously introduced myself and was immediately heartened by the warmth of the Ralston family. Jan was as sweet and kind as she could be, and Gary, though gruff, was also polite and probably just as nervous as I was—in his case, wondering to what extent I was judging him and his family. With Jan and Gary were their two sons: Steven, who had been forced to join the Klan by his dad, and Allan, who had refused to join and had been initially disowned by his parents after telling them he was gay.
On the ride to the studio we talked about their story, which, as it turns out, was far deeper than I had known. Not only had the family disowned Allan, but Gary had actually been plotting with some of his Klan brothers to murder his son after learning of his sexuality. In part, it was Jan’s horror at realizing that her husband was planning to kill her flesh and blood that had begun to snap her out of the white supremacist coma into which she and the family had fallen three years earlier. At one point, as Allan was planning on coming home to Stone Mountain, Georgia, for a visit, Jan had pleaded with him to stay in Texas for fear that had he returned home, Gary and other Klansmen would have murdered him.
The show went well, as the Ralstons and I effectively dismantled the incoherent ramblings of Ken and Carol Peterson (or really just Ken, since he rarely allowed his wife to speak). After returning to the Bostonian, we sat in the hotel bar for two hours, discussing how they had come to join the Klan, how they had come to realize the error of their ways, and how they were committed to making it right by speaking out against racism. I told them about my life as well, after which point Jan said I was one of the first Jewish people she had ever really talked to at length, and how she was so sorry about all the things she had said and felt about Jews in the past. I quickly forgave her of course, thanked them for their courage, and as night became early morning, we all said our goodbyes and went off to bed.
I didn’t sleep. Putting aside the exhilaration at having been on my first national television show and having solidly represented the antiracist perspective, I was more excited by what I had come to realize, sitting in that limo with the Ralstons, or later having beers with them and discussing race. What I had learned was the fundamental redeemability of even the most distorted human soul. Staring at these folks, looking deeply into their eyes and witnessing the pain only barely concealed behind them, I had come to know that although David Duke had not changed, those who thought as he did were capable of transformation; that even the most vicious of racists is damaged, before ever joining such a movement, and even more once there. And if people such as that can be redeemed, then perhaps anything is possible—even justice and the end of white supremacy altogether.
THOUGH IT HAD
been nice to be on TV, the appearance still hadn’t opened up the floodgates when it came to job offers. To make ends meet I started working in the stockroom of the Bombay Company, the furniture store where Nicol was manager. Then in August, Nicol somehow managed to wrangle a decorator’s contract to design the VIP suites at the Republican National Convention, which was being held in Houston that year, as well as the official “Bush family residence.” The residence, as it happens, was just a hollowed out game room at the Houstonian Hotel: the Bush family’s permanent Houston address so they could avoid paying state income taxes in Maine, where they actually lived when not at the White House.
Not having other work, I was immediately drafted into Nicol’s decorator’s army for the GOP shindig. Though I dreaded being that close to so many Republicans—especially so many of Pat Buchanan’s supporters—I thought it might be a good opportunity to do some enemy reconnaissance, and to peek behind the curtains of the right-wing machine that was gearing up to take on Bill Clinton in November.
To a large extent, it wouldn’t be necessary to peek behind any curtains, as much of the extremist lunacy present at the convention would receive ample coverage in the press. On opening night, Pat Buchanan delivered his infamous “culture war” speech, in which he raised the specter of the L.A. riots, repeating an utter fabrication that the rioters had been prepared to attack an old folks’ home until brave soldiers stopped them, and then noting that just as the soldiers had reclaimed Los Angeles, block by block, so too must conservative Christians “take back their country” block by block from the un-American pornographers, feminists, and homosexuals who were seeking to hijack it. Referring to Democrats as “cross-dressers,” Buchanan suggested that if elected, Bill and Hillary Clinton would usher in an era where children would be encouraged to sue their parents, and the institution of marriage would be utterly eviscerated by militant lesbians and Hillary herself. I was in the convention hall that night, bringing furniture to the VIP rooms in the Astrodome, and was reminded of nothing so much as old footage of rallies at Nuremberg, sixty years prior, led by a certain German Chancellor to whom Buchanan had once referred as “an individual of great courage.”
Although the convention’s hostility seemed mostly focused on the LGBT community, there was always room for a little racial anxiety too. So early on the first day of the convention, as delegates were beginning to arrive (and as Nicol and I were hauling boxes of furniture from the car to the VIP lounges), I happened to look out at the mostly-empty floor of the convention space, to the Jumbotrons overhead that would soon show up-close coverage of the event to attendees in the nosebleed seats. There, in full-screen color, snarling out over the hall, as if to remind those entering who the enemy was, was a freeze-frame image of the rapper Ice-T.
The previous month, Ice had come under fire from law enforcement (and groups like Tipper Gore’s Parent’s Music Resource Center) for the song “Cop Killer,” which appeared on the first album of his speed metal band, Body Count. The song, which told a story of revenge being taken on law enforcement because of police brutality, was seen by some as a call for murdering officers. Although no one really believed Johnny Cash had wanted to “kill a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” when violence fantasies are spun by black men, naturally, they are never just fictionalized accounts intended as art, but are to be viewed as ruminations on the inherent nature of the person singing them. And there he was, the big, bad rapper (though “Cop Killer” was not a rap song), scaring the Republican faithful as they entered the Astrodome. Let it suffice to say, subtlety was not their strong suit.
BUT THE WILLINGNESS
of conservatives to exploit racial fears for the purpose of revving up the troops was hardly a revelation. It wasn’t even remotely surprising. What
was
instructive, however, was coming to understand more viscerally than I ever had before, just how much my white skin insulated me from the harsh judgments or suspicions of others.
After we were done with the rooms at the convention hall, Nicol and I headed over to the Houstonian, where we were to meet two of her Bombay Company colleagues, so as to begin setting up Barbara and George H.W. Bush’s “living room,” from which place they would be interviewed throughout the convention by the networks. It was an interminably hot and humid day, and we made the drive from one side of town to the next (which, in Houston, routinely takes over an hour) without air conditioning, in the Tercel, the back seat and hatch area filled to the brim with boxes of cheap imitation antique tables, chairs, and accessories. By the time we arrived at the checkpoint for the hotel—which was set up near the road, just inside the driveway to the main building—we were more than a little ragged around the edges, covered in sweat, and desperate to get out of the heat.
Despite the way we looked, and despite the way in which the car was stuffed with closed boxes (in which, frankly, could have been anything—weapons as easily as furniture), when security asked us why we were there, and we told them, they did nothing more than briefly glance through the back window and then wave us on. They did not ask for identification or a contact number for the persons with whom Nicol had contracted for the job in the first place—nothing.
We proceeded to spend the next four hours setting up the room in which the President of the United States and First Lady would be staying throughout prime time convention hours. We rearranged furniture from the hotel, brought in new furniture from outside, and did all of this with no oversight or security whatsoever. There were no cameras in the room and we finished a mere five minutes before the Bushes were to enter, which is to say, there was no time for any security sweep once we had exited.
Simply put, no one considered that perhaps they might want to check out who we were and what we were doing. Had we been black, security would never have been so sanguine. Had we appeared to be Arab, it is highly unlikely that our car and furniture boxes would have gone unchecked. But white twenty-three-year-olds? What could there possibly be to worry about? The fact that I had been told four years before that I couldn’t even ride in a campaign motorcade with Michael Dukakis because I couldn’t pass a background check—the result of my already-extant FBI file—didn’t matter. They simply hadn’t thought to ask or do their homework. Fact is, had I been the least bit inclined to kill the president, he would have been dead, and Dan Quayle would have inherited the office. We could have planted a bomb in that room or climbed one of the trees that sat not thirty feet from the room’s large floor-to-ceiling windows and shot him. Of course we never would have done such a thing (and not only because Dan Quayle would have inherited the office), but the sickening fact is, we
could
have, because we’re white, and therefore, presumed not to be dangerous.
THOUGH THE
JANE
WHITNEY SHOW had only been seen in about thirty-five markets, and thus, my television debut had been witnessed by a pitifully small number of people, there was one person watching that evening upon whom I had made a significant impression.
I received a call at our Houston apartment a week after the show aired from a man in South Haven, Connecticut, who told me his name was “Coach Jimmy Jackson.” Coach Jimmy, as I would come to know him, had quite a story to tell, and felt that I was just the person with whom he could share it. Normally, this would have been the kind of thing I would likely have blown off—merely humoring him until he got tired of talking and then politely saying ‘goodbye,’ never to speak again—but there was something about Jimmy that struck me as genuine, and kind. Furthermore, his story of discrimination rang true for me, such that I offered to take a closer look and do whatever I could to help.
Jimmy Jackson had been everything from a cop to a recording artist with Buddha Records back in the late 1960s. He had also joined the New York Jets in 1966, only to suffer an injury in training camp, thereby ending his football career before it had started. But mostly, and what he wanted me to know, was that he was a football coach, and a damned good one, having won two national semi-pro championships, been in three semi-pro Super Bowls, compiled an overall winning percentage of 73 percent, and having been voted General Manager of the Year and three-time coach-of-the-year in the minor leagues. Why all of this mattered was that Coach Jimmy was in the process of suing the National Football League and the fledgling World League of American Football for racial discrimination. The World League had formed a few years prior as an experimental operation, with teams in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, but despite his impressive accomplishments and the recommendations he had received from persons like Jack Pardee, head coach of the NFL Houston Oilers; Gene Burrough, former GM of the New Jersey Generals (of the United States Football League); legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas; and Tim Rooney, Director of Personnel for the NFL Giants, Jackson had been passed over for a coaching gig with the league. Not only had Jackson not been hired for a job in the World League, no black coach had been, despite the claims of the league director that a diverse coaching pool was among their top priorities. Jimmy promised to send me the supporting materials for his lawsuit, and I promised I would look them over.

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