Clubs, by Betsy

In 1950 when I was 15 years old our family moved from New Jersey to Louisiana.

I have often said a comparable change would be moving from Earth to the moon.

In this case, however, the moon would have been populated with humanoids who had their own culture and language--very much different from anything I had ever encountered in my young life. However, I was young and I had much to learn and experience. 

The first difference that I noticed in my new home was the blatant discrimination and racist practices carried out against people of color. I’m not so sure the same thing was not going on in New Jersey. I suspect I just didn’t see it. It was hidden. In the deep South, it couldn’t be hidden because of the large population of African Americans.  Almost every household in my new hometown had at least one black person working for them. These family servants had to have their own toilet facilities usually outside or in the garage, their own private glass from which to get a drink of water (never would a white person want to drink from the same glass!) We all know about the public drinking fountains.

Of course, the schools were segregated as was everything else. I left the South to attend college in New York State in 1953 never to return except for visits with my parents.

After federal legislation made segregation illegal in the 1960’s nothing changed much in Louisiana. These southern people are slow moving indeed.  It was not until the late 1970’s that they finally were forced to allow black people to use public facilities such as restaurants. On one occasion when I returned to Hammond for a visit, my high school friend suggested we go out to dinner. She assured me they had solved the problem of integration by making the city restaurants into private clubs. Most whites belonged to all the clubs and there were many of them. We would have to take our own liquor since it was no longer a public place. The private clubs could or would not get licenses to sell liquor. 

White folks continued for decades to claim that the culture of segregation is justified because everyone is happy with the status quo including blacks. That’s how we want it and that’s how they want it, was the claim.  People want to stay in their place and keep to themselves. Keep to themselves, maybe, but stay in their current place--please!

The last time I visited Hammond, Louisiana was in 2003 when I attended my fiftieth high school reunion. I had no family there except in the cemetery in the church yard.

I was happy to see that the public places that had had a brief existence as private clubs--they had all become public places again, businesses now open to all people. The college in Hammond--a branch of Louisiana State University--included many black students, and many higher paying positions previously unavailable to people of color were now occupied by African Americans. Change comes slowly but change for the better had indeed come to Hammond Louisiana albeit at the expense of the lives of many good people and many hard-fought battles lasting for decades.

It saddens me more than I can say to watch the evening news and see that racism is alive and well today in the United States of America--land of the free and home of the brave—and not just in the South.  At the same time, I am happy to see that public places are not changing into private clubs in order to avoid the law of the land. The law of the land has made segregation in public places illegal as it should be. In spite of this institutional racism is prevalent. A young law abiding African American or Latino male in some locations is suspect simply because of who he is. Racial profiling is common practice in some areas. Our prisons are filled with men and women of color in numbers disproportionate to the population. In recent years, we have witnessed the passage of laws in some states designed to make it almost impossible for certain people to vote. Those laws, in my opinion, target low income people of color. 

While being white, I have not had to experience the horrors of decades of discrimination I have described here. I have, however, experienced on a very few brief occasions the hatred felt toward a person who is perceived as being different and a threat to the power structure. We have seen that progress against discrimination and hatred can come quickly when our leaders pass laws making discrimination illegal.

I want to believe there is a basic innate goodness in all human beings on this planet--our leaders, law enforcement officials, even the wrong-doers and criminals.

Let us step back and consider our place in the universe--so small, so isolated, so seemingly vulnerable.  At the same time, we must consider that we are creatures who have the capacity to love each other and to love this tiny speck of rock we live on.  Love is the means to peace on Earth, I believe.  Let us look beyond our egos and other constructs of the mind. It is our egos that drive us to create clubs so we can segregate ourselves from each other. Let us all look inside beyond our egos and awaken to our very core, our being, which is love. I do believe love is the answer for us humans.

 © 23 Mar 2015 

About the Author 

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.