Jimmy
Carter came out with a recent statement that has made its way into the news,
the claim: “I was the only white child in the neighborhood.” Jimmy Carter was
born James Earl Carter Jr. on October 1, 1924. He grew up in the rural town of
Archery, Georgia. When he wasn’t helping his father on the peanut farm, he was
fishing or playing in the woods with his friends, most of whom were African-
American.
Ultimately,
the former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner said in this weekend’s “SuperSoul
Sunday” interview, growing up as the only white child in a predominately black
community had a profoundly positive impact on his life. Jimmy Carter was quoted
on Oprah, saying:
The people with
whom I worked in the field, and the people with whom I wrestled and fought, and
the people with whom I went fishing and hunting were all African Americans. I
felt, kind of, in an alien culture when I got old enough to go to a white
school and that sort of thing.
“In fact,” President Carter
continued, “I try to think of the five people, other than my own parents, who
shaped my life, and only two of them are white. The other three were African
Americans.”
Oprah
then turned the conversation to recent racial tensions in the United States. “Why
do you think we’re at such a divide in this country right now?” she asked. “It
feels that racism is rearing its ugly head in a way unimaginable.” President
Carter said he thinks the racial divide stems from a national misunderstanding following
the Civil Rights Movement’s accomplishments.
In context with
the class, I would agree with Jimmy Carter’s statements regarding a
misunderstanding of what the Civil Rights Movement accomplished. A lot of the misunderstanding stems from a
lack of education about the social reform that took place after the Civil
Rights Movement. In class we dive into specific issues and we submerge
ourselves with African American life and problems these people faced. It is an
issue that receives a limited amount of attention in our education system.
We need to do a
better job as a nation at educating our youth on race relations in America.
This specific issue served as a reminder to me of a more-simple time in
American history. A time where our nation’s leaders were surrounded by
Americans of color, instead of being raised in an atmosphere of exclusionary
fantasy.
This blog is really intriguing to me because I have always found presidential facts to be interesting. I think this image of Jimmy Carter is one that people would like to see more in presidential candidates. If you can, imagine if Donald Trump was making these suggestions and telling reporters about his childhood and how it was surrounded with people of color. Instead, we have candidates that are marginalizing individuals and trying to remove them from the mainstream of American life. In contrast, an individual that has a similar childhood as Jimmy Carter is becoming more uncharacteristic.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that Carter states that it "...felt, kind of, in an alien culture..." His glimpse into what he calls an alien culture is exactly how African Americans felt-- the Black community has always been surrounded by the White community. Actually, the Black community has not just been surrounded, but it has been forced to live in a White world. I do agree with you when you say that this divide is partially due to the lack of education. However, I would also attribute this divide to the fact that Reconstruction never actually happened, instead President Johnson pushed for Restoration, which just reinforced and protected the previous racist ideologies that Lincoln had been trying to get rid of.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to do a better job at educating our youth about what exactly the Civil Rights movement and the Civil Rights Act accomplished. Growing up in public school, we only learned that civil rights helped African Americans reach equality. Then, everything was fine and continues to be fine. I think we need to teach that after civil rights, African Americans still had to fight to be equal and still do to this day. The Civil Rights Act did not magically solve all of America's race problems. If we educated on the education gap, institutional racism, and police brutality maybe change towards true equality would progress faster.
ReplyDeleteJack -
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this post because while I was aware that Carter grew up on a peanut farm, I did not know that he grew up in a predominantly African American community in a Georgia suburb. It is interesting to see how foreign and uncomfortable Carter may have felt as the only white person on the farm because although I would not know for certain, I would assume that is how blacks feel in a lot of areas of the United States, especially in sports and other activities.
The misunderstanding around the Civil Rights Movement could be attributed to the general lack of awareness that Americans have towards it. People often fail to recognize that we are still in a movement associated with human rights, equality, fear, and oppression. It is not as subjective as one may think, and it did not simply happen between the years 1950 and 1975. This course has helped me realize that.
Jack I agree with you on the fact that we need to do a better job on race relations in America. One of the biggest problems we face in finding common ground on racial issues is agreeing that racial issues exist at all. If we continue to believe as a community that the civil rights fixed the enormous wealth inequalities and education problems, then the struggle for equality will take much longer. The area I disagree with you though is this generalization that Jimmy Carter lived during a time where our nations leaders interacted with with all people not just citizens experiencing white privilege. I genuinely believe this is a unique example due to the fact that he was born in 1924 and lived through a time where there were segregated schools, Jim Crow was still flourishing, and housing discrimination was extremely prevalent. I understand that Jimmy Carter himself may have experienced something completely different than what I am talking about, but to say that most our leaders interacted with African Americans like Carter did is a large assumption.
ReplyDeleteJack I agree with you on the fact that we need to do a better job on race relations in America. One of the biggest problems we face in finding common ground on racial issues is agreeing that racial issues exist at all. If we continue to believe as a community that the civil rights fixed the enormous wealth inequalities and education problems, then the struggle for equality will take much longer. The area I disagree with you though is this generalization that Jimmy Carter lived during a time where our nations leaders interacted with with all people not just citizens experiencing white privilege. I genuinely believe this is a unique example due to the fact that he was born in 1924 and lived through a time where there were segregated schools, Jim Crow was still flourishing, and housing discrimination was extremely prevalent. I understand that Jimmy Carter himself may have experienced something completely different than what I am talking about, but to say that most our leaders interacted with African Americans like Carter did is a large assumption.
ReplyDelete