I have a strong tendency to jump uninvited into someone else’s fight, especially when I see an idiotic verbal punch being thrown.
A friend of mine is friends on Facebook with a man who is a total stranger to me, but I have decided I do not like him in the least.
My friend, in his 70s, frequently posts about his experiences as a Black man dealing with racism throughout his life.
This other dude has proven himself to be a privileged white person, blind to history, deaf to my friend’s life experiences as a Black man, and he writes over and over “you need to just get over it.”
“Get over it,” he says.
Get over it?
In 1958, a coal mine collapsed in Springhill, Nova Scotia, killing 75 and trapping another 174 men. The Governor of the state of Georgia, Marvin Griffin, invited the last 19 men pulled from the mine to come to Jekyll Island. It was a publicity stunt that backfired on him.
See, of the 19, 18 were white. The 19th man was a Black Canadian, Maurice Ruddick.
Georgia had invited each of the men to bring their families to enjoy all of the beauty of Jekyll - the beaches, the hotels and the restaurants. When Governor, Griffin, a staunch segregationist, discovered his “error” in inviting a Black man to enjoy the segregated south, he ordered trailers to be set up on the opposite end of the island for Reddick and his family. They were not allowed to eat in the restaurants, or swim in the hotel swimming polls, and instead spent their time isolated from everyone else.
“Get over it.”
GET OVER IT??
I was 8 years old when that happened. I was living in the same state where it happened. It made the New York news, but was censored by the Georgia news media.
My friend was 9 years old, and this, for him and many others, was not an isolated incident. No, he was not there, but he was in the Great American South, where institutional racism was built into the very fabric of every aspect of society, and he and all Black people experienced the life of “separate but equal” for much of their years growing up. There were White water coolers and “colored” water coolers.
Get over it.
There were “Black jobs”, which were menial work “reserved” for Black people.
Get over it.
There were the Jim Crow laws intended to keep Black people disenfranchised.
Get over it.
In every southern town, there was always a Division Street, which was the street dividing the side of town where the whites lived from where the Black people were “allowed” to live.
Get over it.
Today, redlining takes the place of Division Streets around the country. There are neighborhoods set aside and isolated for Black residents.
Get over it.
There was the Negro Baseball League. I was at a seminar where a prominent Cvivil Rights leader spoke. A white man in the audience said, “it wasn’t bad. We welcomed the black ball, players to Jacksonville.”
Except there were no hotels where they could stay. No restaurants where they could eat, so the Black community opened their homes to let the ball players stay with them, and they fed them.
Get over it.
Unions did not accept Black tradespeople. Here in Jacksonville, a major labor union was still denying membership to Black people as late as the 1990s.
Get over it.
I do not know how I would get over being told I cannot drink water from a water cooler.
I do not know how I could get over being told I could not eat in a restaurant due to the color of my skin.
I do not know how I would get over not being allowed to walk into a movie theater because I was not white.
Whites only signs at “public” swimming pools.
Get over it.
In 1970, Jacksonville University’s basketball team, led by Artis Gilmore, made it to the NCAA Championship game. They were local heroes.
A local Episcopal Church in Jacksonville had received word that a group of people had decided to integrate the church on a particular Sunday. The number of ushers was doubled, then tripled, and they were instructed to block entrance to any Black people who tried to enter.
They were locked and loaded that Sunday morning.
Suddenly the doors opened and in walked the unmistakeable 7’2” Black Artis Gilmore with his teammates. The ushers backed up, opened the inner doors and invited them in to a standing ovation - for the team.
BUT, these white supremacist churchmen were ready to eject any Black person who wanted to worship with them in 1970.
Get over it.
“Things have changed,” the white dude said to my friend. “Can’t we just all get along?”
It is going to be a long row to hoe for people who have experienced what Black people in this country have experienced. Many are only two generations from their enslaved ancestors, who were kidnapped, bought, sold, traded like animals, beaten, raped, lynched and burned alive because of the color of their skin.
Get over it? I think not.
It is a lifelong process to heal from the wounds of a lifetime, especially when the wounds are re-opened again and again.
“Get over it “ is what sometime says who has never shared what you have experienced.
“Get over it” screams ignorance, lack of empathy, self-absorption and absolute absurdity.
We don’t get over it because someone needs to remember history so that it is not repeated yet again.
We don’t get over it because we need to know what others have experienced at the hands of institutional, cultural, and religious racism.
Yes, there have been changes, but until the words”all people are created equal” is an achieved legacy upon which we can build, none of us should ever say “get over it” or even consider getting over it ourselves.
Until all are equal, none are equal.
In Resistance,
Greg
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Amen.
“Until all are equal, none are equal.”
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you for speaking this. It makes it even harder to heal and move forward when there is a national resurgence of the same spirit of injurious behavior.