My Bass-ackwards Introduction to Racism, Nelson Mandela, Apartheid, Afro Sheen and Zima

Raised around whites, I never found out if I was a racist.  My dad tried his best to expose us to varying cultures, putting us in ten different school districts in ten years, while trying to run away from himself.  After I left home at 16, my last two years were stable at Kent-Meridian.

Joan Baez, Bob Dylan

My brief infatuation with Joan Baez, who performed at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962, was not consciously interracial. The year before, the girl from the Umatilla Indian Reservation who had been chasing me around Pilot Rock, Oregon, left me alone on the dance floor when she saw my mother had given my blonde hair a military cut for the summer.

I saw the civil rights movement only on TV; dogs, fire hoses, billy clubs, freedom marches. I did hear "Blowin' in the Wind" on KJR radio Seattle, the same anti-racism song Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sang among others before the 250,000 who marched on Washington in 1963.

My racial antenna became more sensitive in Little Rock(1974-96), a racially divided city where otherwise well-mannered whites used the "N" word and conversely were referred to by blacks as honkies, crackers and peckerwoods. Followers of Elijah Muhammad, with bowties and black blazers, hawked glossy newspapers explaining why the white man was the devil.  Little Rock's three school districts were under a forced desegregation order which resulted in whites vacating the city for the suburbs.  By the time our son was in high school, whites were the minority and the law as written meant they could be picked up by bus at their door and attend any school of their choosing.

In my unionized workplace, all the battles had been long since fought by black people.  The company, weary of the fights, fines and negative PR of racism, generally crossed all their t's and dotted all their proverbial i's in terms of tenure, promotion, scheduling and separation.  Some of the smart, tough blacks who had fought these battles were ostracized in terms of advancement, but too smart to do anything worthy of firing.  One of these was Keith Wine, who as a youth had dropped out of school at Ann Arbor, joining the Black Panthers.   Wine, in conversations, lunches and coffee breaks over several years educated me on racism in this hemisphere and in South Africa, referencing Stephen Biko and Nelson Mandela, but also the music of Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, etc., many of whom came together for Paul Simon's Graceland Concert in Zimbabwe in 1987 in defiance of withering criticism from anti-apartheid groups.  Below is a tiny portion of that concert(copyright laws prevent sharing more):

I kept this VHS tape in my glove compartment, pulling it out when conversation died after dinner. Most, black or white, had never heard these artists or understood their struggles with and against apartheid.  Hugh Masekela's powerful story telling in "Stimela" is my favorite from this concert, but not included above.

We did get to hear Hugh Masekela live at Robinson Auditorium in Little Rock in 1993.  Chaka Khan was on the same bill, but they performed separately.  After Masekela performed, about a third of the all-black audience walked out, having some unexplained beef with Chaka Khan.  After the show, George Johnson, the originator of Afro Sheen and other beauty products for blacks gave a brief presentation as did an old friend, Orlander Burnley, Jr., representing a new Coors anti-beer, Zima.