[Bill Britton is a freelance writer and formerly an editor for John Hopkins University Press, ABI Research, and Elsevier Science.  He is a frequent contributor to Vero Communiqué, though his views do not reflect the position of Vero Communiqué. Vero Communiqué encourages a free and open exchange of ideas by welcoming reader’s editorial submissions.]

I was born in 1938, just before the carnage began that we call World War II. In a few short years, I became aware of the war by listening to adults talking about it and voicing their concern for friends and family members sent to far-off places to fight “Krauts” and “Japs.” My father went to work for Republic Aviation during the war, and my mother went back to teaching.

I remember clearly VJ Day (Victory over Japan). I lived in the village of Locust Valley whose front porches were filled with families waving white handkerchiefs and singing patriotic songs and some marginally patriotic ones, e.g., “Whistle while you work! / Hitler is a jerk! / Mussolini bit his weenie / Now it doesn’t work.” Afraid of the “yellow peril,” 120 thousand Japanese-Americans were sent to interment camps.

The war ended in 1945, and two years later, Jackie Robinson broke the color line and began playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. My relatives in upstate New York, most of whom were Dodger fans, immediately switched their allegiance to the all-white New York Yankees. I’m not sure what they did when Elston Howard became the first Black player to wear Yankee pinstripes eight years later, but I’m sure they grumbled a lot. I remained a Dodger fan until they moved west.

In the late 1940s, our community on Long Island staged a minstrel show, complete with blackface and stumble-bum characterizations of Black folks. Some of the players and musicians were local teachers and businesspeople who played their parts with gusto. At the time, I thought the production was quite funny, but in retrospect, it was certainly racist.

When I was in sixth grade, our teacher left the classroom for a few minutes and returned with a young Black boy in tow. She introduced us to Lloyd, then turned to me and said, “Bill, I want you to be friends with Lloyd and show him around the school.” Lloyd was soon accepted by my fellow classmates, especially when we witnessed his prowess as an athlete. Having come from South Carolina and its legacy racism, Lloyd was initially confused by white friendship.

Up to that point, I had never talked to and rarely seen a Black person of any age. Locust Valley was lilly white on the surface; Black kids were bussed to nearby Glen Cove, which had a Black population. By the time I reached high school, Locust Valley had become fully integrated, and I felt at ease with all my classmates, no matter their color.

After graduating high school in 1956, I had an unsuccessful college year, then joined the Marines. I travelled to Parris Island for boot camp on a train with 70 other recruits from the northeast, many being Black and Hispanic. We transferred to a bus in Yemassee, SC for the final leg to “PI.” On the way, we stopped for a “pit stop” and “pogey bait” (Marine for snacks) at a local grocery store. I can still picture the sign at the rear of the store with a single word: “Blacks” (and an arrow pointing to an outhouse). 

The Black recruits quietly did as they were directed and queued up at the outhouse door. This was only a few years before Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King’s “I Hava a Dream Speech,” and the battles over school integration. The Marines were not fully integrated until 1960, and although I was never witness to racial problems during my enlistment, they did emerge a few years later during the Vietnam era.

A few years ago, I travelled to Long Island from my home in Florida to visit friends and family. While there, I had lunch at a local restaurant. I was seated next to a table occupied by a half dozen road crew workers who made bigoted remarks about Black people. I turned toward them and said, “Keep it down, please. I have two Black great-grandchildren” (which I do. I also had a Black great uncle.). Other than a look of anger, they voiced no reaction.

I now live in a senior community in DeSantis-land (Florida). The majority of residents are followers of Donald Trump, and my being a Liberal can occasion some awkward moments, especially when someone assumes that I am a Trump follower because of my Marine background. To minimize those moments, I rarely talk about politics unless the person is of similar political leaning.

I’ve heard politicians and media persons claim that America is not a racist country. I beg to differ. In 1856, the chief justice of the Supreme Court wrote in the infamous ruling on the Dred Scott case that Black people “had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

America’s systems, e.g., its criminal justice, education and medical systems, have a pro-white/anti-Black bias, and an extraordinary portion of America denies or defends those biases. Until we acknowledge those biases through self-examination, the promise of America will remain unfulfilled.