Improving

by Barry Girolamo

Created on: April 12, 2011   Last Updated: November 03, 2011

Most of us from the “boomer” generation can remember quite vividly just how deep racial prejudices ran when we were growing up back in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. My mother was from the deep south. Waycross, Georgia, to be exact, and when we would journey down to visit my grandmother, we were “Yankees” to those who lived there, and they weren’t referring to the New York Yankee baseball team. They were still fighting the Civil War down there at that time, and we were the enemy still. There was a black side of town (and worse terms were used), and a white side of town. It was accepted as the norm, and that’s just the way it was.

An interracial couple would have had a very difficult time living south of the Mason Dixon line at that time. In fact, their existence would have been nothing short of a living hell, as they would have been ostracized by both sides of their families, and by most members of society. And things wouldn’t have been much better up in the northeast at that time either.

When I was attending the public school system here on Long Island, New York, there was definitely racial “steering” being perpetrated against minorities by realtors. We too had black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods. My high school had two black students that I remember. Even on our television programs, there was still racial unrest. I can remember how Carroll O’Conner, playing the role of “Archie Bunker” in the groundbreaking and hit sitcom “All In the Family” reacted when he found out that his new next door neighbor was to be one “George Jefferson“, a black man with a black family. He found it to be rather objectionable, to say the least, (what a great show that was).

So, here we are in the twenty first century, close to one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery in this country, and there are strong indications that racism has declined significantly. Some 620,00 thousand soldiers gave there lives in that terrible struggle, and Lincoln himself made the ultimate sacrifice in his bid to end slavery and hold the union together.

I am of Italian American descent, and one of my son-in-laws is of African American descent. He and my daughter have given us a beautiful grandchild that we all love, and not only are he and I related, but we are good friends as well. Yes, things have improved, let there be no doubt about it in anyone‘s mind. I know this to be true, for I have seen it happen with my own eyes.

The title given for the purposes of this debate reads, “Are race relations improving or worsening?” Well, there is indisputable evidence showing that relations between the different races inhabiting this great country have indeed improved, and one has only to switch on the television and listen to President Obama speak to see proof of this. Enough said.

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