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1. Willard Bolinger says:

   February 28, 2018 at 1:18 pm

   I am 75 and “white”, adopted after taking from Chippewa family but mother, father and grandmother were “white”. I grew up on a farm in Iowa but moved to Fayette, Mo. as a freshman in high school and it was a shocking experience to confront Jim Crow, Missouri and the poverty and no decent jobs in town for blacks. Nor could they eat at restaurants and in 1956 they could only check out books at Carnegie Library but not sit at the tables or park, swimming pool or the two soda fountain booths and stools where we white kids hug out in two parmacies, orr even the pool hall! We travel into the southern states where things were worse. The Civil Rights Movement taught me over time as I worked in an auto assembly plant in Kansas City, Ks beginning in 1962 and finished my one yr of college at Penn Valley and UMKC in history and Economics. I was in opposition while in high school and brought issues up in history class that got me called a northern smart aleck. And a long list of other things while still living in Fayette, But the racism from many of my white coworkers compared to my learning experiences while in many discussions with black workers and learning from my studying also. For many black workers they were expected to help other family members financially much more than most white workers. Much more likely to have someone in jail, or prison and stopped by police was common. The educational advantages of whites was quite obvious also! Fayette’s Lincoln school only went to 8th grade! The wealth of whites compared to black is very wide from centuries of favoritism to whites though I find very few understand that is the case or why. I took a black history course from Dr. Edward Beasley at Penn Valley in 1970-71 also. Anyway what I have learned in my 75 years is that racism and white privilege is deeply seated and always a part of the country long before the USA became a country! White people have been privileged all along which includes me and it has been a continuing process while blacks were only slowly hired and for many the first laid off while the many economic crises happened. Whites who lost their jobs could get new jobs quicker and easier than many blacks. Supreme Court cases like the 1974 Millikan case and the BaKke decision undercut desegregation of schools and the continuing under funding of many schools in the racial segregated in housing has continued in areas blacks are still living in large numbers while white suburban schools are greatly financed with lots of acreage and fine facilities compared to most black majority schools and still based on property taxes which should be obvious does not work. American favor privilege not equality. Low minimum wages hit black people more but many poor whites too. No real attempt to do much to help the poor they are the permanent cheap labor force that keeps things cheaper for all those above their economic layers, Increasing of sales taxes hurt also. Social security should not be paid until above the poverty level somewhere. Those who run this country to me want the money for the few and do not really care and find racism useful in keeping things from changing but only very slowly over the long run. Even manny blacks who make it through college and into business and the corporate world tend to just enjoy their successes but that is the history of almost all the whites also. I was picked on by my coworkers that I should just enjoy my myself and not try to change things but I am stubborn and bullheaded and like myself the way I am. We miss Obama though I have my criticism of his administration. Trump is by far the worst I have ever seen. I heard you speak somewhere in Kansas City in the distant past. I look forward to your book. For twenty years now I have been specializing in black history, There is a lot of new books and a lot on the internet compared to my days of doing research in the 1970s at UMKC! Heard you on KCUR this morning! The struggle is long and hard and a long ways to go yet but a whole lot better than in the past. I tried to get a black woman to marry marry me in 1989 but I am a life long atheist and she is a Christian but we are still good friends! Willard (Bill) Bolinger at thnk4yurself@yahoo

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