Mennonite Church Peace Resources for Youth

Whether it was by God's grace or sheer luck, I ended up playing drums in the U.S. Army Soldier Show based at Fort McPherson, Atlanta, Georgia. It was an interesting place to be as a conscientious objector, but also to be touring our musical shows in the South (Georgia, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky) in the early '70s, when racial segregation was still a very tense issue. The Civil Rights or Southern Freedom movement had not yet transformed the Old South.

Having grown up in California racism was not as overt as it was in the South. I never thought race was an issue where I lived. I went to school in the 50's and 60's and had friends who were Mexican, Japanese, and African-American. My mother worked with Mexicans and African-Americans at a laundromat. But, only much later, as I began to understand the how racism operates did I remember my father telling racial jokes when I was young and hearing them at school, the segregation of blacks and Mexicans in the "Colonia" of my home town, remembering the predominantly black high school, and other effects of racism. Still, I don't think most whites in my home town viewed themselves as "racist."

After I was drafted into the Army as a conscientious objector at the age of 20 I was stationed at the beginning of 1970 in Augusta, Georgia. One of my first experiences with overt racism was in a conversation, or should I say an argument, I had with two other pharmacy assistants, from the South, with whom I worked. They told me that "blacks were naturally inferior to whites." It was not a matter of prejudice, but of biology. They just didn't have in their genetic make up the mental capacity of white people! I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I had never encountered this kind of overt racism.

When most whites think of racism, they are usually thinking of overt racism, rather than the more subtle form of racism that I didn't even notice as a young person growing up in California. Among young people today racism is even harder to spot, since they are growing up in multicultural and multiracial settings. They think of themselves as being color-blind. But, this is not the case at all. Racism exists systemically in the culture, structures, and institutions of our society, even within youth culture.

As strange as it might sound at first, it was in the Army in the South as a young person that I saw some radical transgressions of racial boundaries. It was decided that we were going to do a first, the first military production of David Merrick's Broadway production "Hello Dolly." That was not the biggest "first." It would also be the first fully racially integrated cast ensemble. The leading couples in the production were racially mixed. And this was going to be toured through all the Army bases in the South in 1970! It was a daring challenge to racism in the South, particularly within the military, that, surprisingly, went over very well.

We have only scratched the surface of dismantling racism since the years of my youth in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. We still have a long way yet to go. I would encourage all young people to take the Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Damascus Road racism analysis training to get a better understanding of the nature of racism (http://mcc.org/damascusroad/) and as a way to become a better peacemaker. Then, maybe some young people today could take some of their own daring moves to dismantle racism.