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The Log in Our Eyes

At age 15, the year 1953, in the state of Ohio, I walked into my 10th grade political science class and found a colored man (which was the term used at that time) sitting behind the teacher’s desk.  I stiffened.  I was deeply offended.

This was all new.  Mr. Boyd was the 3rd of 3 Colored teachers to be hired in our city.  Ever!

 I sat, turned sideways, in my front row desk, looking at the wall.  Other times I kept my eyes on my book.  I rarely looked at Mr. Boyd.  

 One day he kept me after class.  He stood, leaning against his desk front, with arms folded, quietly studying me.

 He spoke then, and said, “You don’t like me do you?”   I turned from my wall – staring and looked at him without answering.  He continued, “And I know why.  It’s because I’m Colored.”  I said, indifferently, “You’re right.”

 Mr. Boyd, with a puzzled look, said, “But your mother’s a teacher!”  (Mother was the 2nd Colored teacher hired).  I quickly and firmly said, “That’s different!”  Mr. Boyd’s eyes showed hurt.  He had read me and saw no need to continue our conversation and I was dismissed.

 I had always felt that I and my family were different.  My parents were 3rd generation college graduates, “not new on the horizon” from a southern state, brought to our city by the Urban League, like Mr. Boyd had been.

 My family was 2nd generation “northern-born.”  In my 15 year old mind, southern people were “freedom-seeking, self-betterment-seeking” people, with the hope of achieving that goal.  They had yet to “become!”  My family, by virtue of their birth, already “were!”  For the reasons here stated, I did not deserve a “Colored” teacher.  Years later, I realized I was a “racist”, and did not know it.  It’s just, that it was against my own people.  I had to have picked up that way of thinking from family and friends in the same way that White children do, only theirs is not against their own.

 What many Colored people learn, unawaredly, is a form of self-hatred, because we allow ourselves, to see ourselves, as those who hate us do. 

 I remember one Sunday at dinner,  Daddy saw that the tip of the carving knife was broken off.  He, exploding, asked my mother and each of us children, how it happened and who did it. No one owned it.

 Daddy ended his rant by saying, “See!  This is how slums are made!  Colored people don’t take care of things!  This was a good carving set, look at it now! This is why White people don’t want Colored people around!  They ruin everything!”

 Yet and still, our family and I, in our thinking, were equal to White people whether they conceded to it or not.  The only things we didn’t have, that they had, were, white skin and straight hair which have nothing to do with intelligence, education, class, and accomplishment.

 In ignorance of our racism towards our own, some of us have long-time, settled for individual White acceptance, based upon such phrases as, “you’re different.  You’re not like them”, which is not, in many ways a bad way of saying the way in which we select and chose anyone we befriend.  We do need to have the same vibes!

 Knowing that racism is alive and well,  I do not choose to involve myself with anyone who embraces it. I look for, and latch onto, the abundance of things human beings have in common and can enjoy with each other.

 We have a lot to learn about, and to correct with ourselves as well as with each other.

 I have grown, from many years ago, when I realized the log in my eye, and I’m still growing. Welcome, those who join me.  

Lora Harrington-Pride
 3/27/25

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