While reading Right to
Ride for Thursday’s class, I came across a phrase which has been
reverberating in my head for a few days.
In chapter one, Kelley quotes an official from the Sixth Avenue
streetcar company named T. Bailey Myers.
Myers is defending segregation as natural and mocking Reverend James
W.C. Pennington’s honorary degree from the University of Heidelburg when he
uses the phrase “a black in the abstract.”
The quote reads “even the metaphysical air of Heidelburg, where he took
his degree, is not free from prejudices, if not those of color, and that many
in this more practical country, who are
willing to recognize a black in the abstract, as a man and a brother, are
not quite prepared to carry it into practice in our cars.” [emphasis added]
“…a black in the
abstract…”
When I first read the statement, two thoughts immediately
came to mind. First was the interesting
link between practicality and segregation in the speaker’s thought
process. Myers frames the enforcement of
segregationist policies as practical in contrast to the “metaphysical air” of
Heidelburg, an interesting statement that speaks to the (flawed) concept that
the American segregation system was natural and therefore superior. Another interesting takeaway which I garnered
was the obvious cognitive dissonance between theoretical acceptance of the
other paired with actual rejection of that other, in that one cannot accept
another “as a man and a brother” and then not “carry it into practice.” The act of NOT carrying it into practice
demonstrates how little the “man and brother” recognition really meant for all
the white folks for whom Myer’s spoke.
I feel like "blacks in the abstract" have always existed in the minds of white slaveholders and citizens, challenging themselves and their consciousnesses. The immorality of the actions they took were not lost on them. Rev. Dr. Thandeka, in her book "Learning to Be White," outlines the actuality of a white shame, a consequence of inequality and segregation, a consequence of slavery and death. In this idea, Thandeka recognizes that white folk have moral dilemmas in the back of their heads and at the core of their selves, and I would take this one step further. White folk during the time in question also had these questions, these dilemmas; they challenged their selfhood, their white supremacy, their consciousnesses. Thus, having "a black in the abstract" is a knife in that consciousness, they knew it was a wrong, a moral dilemma. Knowing that humanity existed/exists at the other end of inequality threatens whiteness, and thus, it needed to be shunned away further towards the abstract. Finally, I would argue that it dug into white people, and the anger, violence, depression, and reverberations from that discrepancy were actualized in other ways similarly as it does today, taking the from of staunch political views (All lives matter), anger against African American Activism, and the like.
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