What I Didn’t Get About Racism, 40 Years As A Republican
Last month, I loaded my groceries into the cart at the Walmart outside town and realized I’d forgotten beer for the cookout at my place. Ray, my next door neighbor, came with me to grab it, since we were already walking back in. I’m 52, Ray’s 51. We’ve gone to every Buckeyes home game for 12 years, I helped him re-roof his shed after that hailstorm in 2019, he helped me pull my car out of a ditch last winter. I’ve never thought twice about anything between us, until that day. The cashier rang me up, took my card, didn’t even glance at my ID. She rang up Ray’s six pack, asked for ID, checked it twice, squinted at the photo, even handed it to the bag boy to look for a second. I joked it off first, said “C’mon Karen, he’s old enough to have grandkids, let alone buy beer.” She laughed, but Ray didn’t say anything until we got back to the car. He said “That happens every time I come here. Every. Single. Time.” I just sat there for a minute, keys in my hand, didn’t know what to say. That’s the first time I really started thinking about all the stuff I got wrong.
I grew up in a tiny town outside Lima, dad ran a plumbing company, voted straight Republican every election from the time he could vote until he died. He taught me that racism was just ugly, stupid people who hated other people for the color of their skin. The civil rights movement fixed the big bad stuff, he said. All you had to do was treat people right, work hard, and you’d get ahead. Anybody who said different was just looking for a handout or trying to stir up trouble to win votes. That made sense to me for most of my life. I worked my way up from nothing, started my landscaping business with a beat-up 1998 Ford F-150 I bought off a guy for $2,000. I worked 12 hour days for five years just to break even. So when people started talking about white privilege back in the 2010s, I rolled my eyes. I thought that meant I didn’t earn anything, that I just got a free ride because of my skin. How dare they, I thought. I worked for every damn thing I have. I ran my business for 25 years, hired whoever showed up on time and worked hard, didn’t care what color they were. I figured that was enough. All that talk about systemic racism was just Democrat nonsense, pitting people against each other for votes.
A couple years back, some of the guys from the local Republican club got me to join the little country club out here, nothing fancy, just a 9-hole course and a pool for the kids. We got a new member that year, a Black cardiologist from the hospital over in Fort Wayne. He’d bought a big house out on the north side, wanted to join. At our monthly steak night, a couple of the older guys started joking that he’d probably gotten a break on the initiation fee because of his skin, that he played the race card to get ahead. I laughed along. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. What did that joke even mean? He went to med school, worked his ass off for 15 years to become a doctor, and they’re calling him a cheater just because he’s Black. I sat there and laughed. I never do that anymore when people say stuff like that now, but I did then. I didn’t see it. I didn’t see how that’s just racism, slow and quiet, not burning crosses, just cutting someone down for no reason other than the color of their skin.
Last year, Ray’s nephew got arrested for DUI. Same BAC as my son got when he was 20, got pulled over out by the university. My son got a fine, probation, had to do a weekend safety class. That was it. No jail time, nothing on his record that stuck. Ray’s nephew had a misdemeanor from when he was 19, possession of a little weed. The judge gave him 30 days in jail. I kept telling myself that’s just how the system works, right? Prior record. But then Ray told me how many times his nephew gets pulled over just for driving his nice used truck through a white subdivision after 9pm. I didn’t know that happens. I’ve been pulled over twice in my whole life, once for a broken tail light, once for speeding, never had the cop reach for his gun, never had them search my car for no reason. I never thought about that. I just always said, if you don’t do anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about. But what if the whole thing’s rigged against you before you even do anything?
I still vote Republican most of the time. I still think small government’s better than big government, I still think people should work for what they get, I still get annoyed when people scream about everything being racist on the news. I don’t think all white people owe anybody a big apology for being born, I don’t buy all that loud woke stuff that gets thrown around on social media. But I know now I was wrong about racism being just a few bad, obvious guys. It’s a thousand small things. The ID check at the grocery store, the joke at the steak night, the DUI sentence that’s harsher just because of the color of your skin. It adds up, day after day, and wears you down. I didn’t see it because I never had to. I benefit from it, whether I want to or not. That’s the part I never knew.
Last week, Ray and I went to that same Walmart again, got beer. The same cashier was there. She didn’t ask me for ID again. She asked Ray for it again. This time, I didn’t joke. I just stood there. She finished, we walked out. Ray didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t either. I don’t have a big speech to give, I don’t have all the answers. I just know now that I didn’t know anything before. That’s enough for right now, I guess.
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