Separate But Not Equal

 Having a voice and telling your own life story is the purpose of  “The View From Your Porch”.

Watching “Sunday Morning” speak about “The Mount Airy”experience in North Carolina just reminded me a lot of my own life experience. 

The history of small towns before the early 70s was one of separate but not equal. You had a white community that wanted to remain separate from other communities of color for the sole reason that they did not believe that you were equal to their status of life. Then there was the communities of color that knew that the white community did not want to as a whole intermingle and mix their families mostly because they did not want to create future generations of mixed blood. There were some in agreement that life would be easier but did not necessarily have a bad taste in their mouth for mixed blood because how could they, it was part of the history in their community to love and accept those whether it was by choice or by force of mixed blood. The benefit of living in a community of mixed blood is that you learn up close and personal that no one is any better than the other because of the color of their skin and that is truly a most beneficial lesson of acceptance of reality. The reason that reality does not exist wholeheartedly in a segregated white community is because they only see things from a distance and they never learn the reality of truth up close and personal.

I have seen the truth from both sides because I come from a segregated family however, I never grew up with their allegiance of segregation because my mother was expelled from their family due to her views. There was never any love lost for me because I never developed  those relationships to begin with. I grew up around mixed communities of White, Native American, Mexican and Black. This community was the working Americans of America. I saw hard-working families working together, celebrating together, building communities together, building America together. I chose someone out of this community to marry and build a family with, which created a multicultural family for myself. My children are the next generation in America and they see a very different view than the story that was told and expressed in Mount Airy. Do we understand those that would rather go back to the idea of a segregated America.? I can say that I understand where that view and idea comes from white America, however that kind of view would separate my family and that would never happen for us.! For many of Americans that View will never work again, so it’s not even a possibility.

Separate but not equal in America will never work again for those that live in those memories and would wish for again. The only suggestion I could make is that you just go off somewhere and create a community for yourself and be happy with that. There needs to be an understanding that there is a reason we call this The United States of America…It’s because all of us as Americans pay with blood, sweat, tears and money the government of this country to represent All of the People. This is the reason that we have the freedoms that we have today, it is because they’ve already been paid for and no one has the right to take that away from future generations… that battle has already been Won!

We are existing as a society today, where to win by any means necessary has become in full view! This particular slogan has been abused by the elitist of America, thinking that they know what’s best for all of us! To abuse and use a group of people that feel they have been forgotten in America for the selfish gain of the elitist is such a wrong existence but where there is power there has always been history of abuse. It is up to the people to unite equally as ONE  to fight off these kind of separatist ideas because America is more than any one group of people… it is what we stand on in the dirt beneath our feet.. therein is the blood of this UNITY!