Read the full transcript of author Jim Enderle’s talk titled “What My Eight Year Old Self Taught Me About Racism” at TEDxEustis 2021 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Ubuntu: I Am Because We Are
JIM ENDERLE: In my 20 years in the Navy, I traveled to dozens of countries around the world, but it was in Africa where I learned the term Ubuntu, often translated as “I am because we are.” The word had immediate meaning for me. Here’s why.
The Awakening of Racial Consciousness
Racism started for me when I was eight years old in Chicago, 1966. Just as I looked at a black man with a little boy on his shoulders, someone threw a rock. The man and the boy were marchers in one of Martin Luther King’s peaceful freedom movement demonstrations. I watched the rock’s trajectory. It all happened so slowly.
I wanted to let out a scream as the rock struck the man in the left temple and he and the little boy fell from my view. Instantly there was chaos, but I just stood there frozen, certain that racism had never occurred before. A man ran up and yanked all 55 pounds of me into the air. He swung open a wooden gate, stuffed me into an empty steel garbage can, and clanged the lid closed.
“Don’t move until you don’t hear anything” is what he told me, and I heard him running down the sidewalk. But I wanted to see the truth of this world with my own eyes. I lifted up the garbage can lid and I peered through the fence. A few minutes later, I climbed from my garbage can and I walked among people who were still moving around as though they were in shock.
In the spot where the man and the little boy fell was a large pool of blood.
I’d never seen someone else’s blood before. They must have needed help, but they were nowhere to be seen. A firetruck pulled up, they uncoiled the hose, and they began to rinse the pavement.
I thought, they’re rinsing that black man’s blood down a Chicago sewer. A half hour later, on a hot summer day, people in the neighborhood were shopping on Lincoln and Belmont Avenues. The pavement was dry, and cars drove right over that spot. I felt like the world’s last witness.
The Challenge of Action
After that, people were angry, I understood. But if you think that was the beginning of a lifetime of activism, not so fast. That same summer, I attended a crowded camp, and of all the children, there was a single black boy named Charles. None of us were mean to Charles, but he wasn’t selected in any of the group activities before his mother withdrew him from the camp by the end of the first week.
In retrospect, I realized that I felt relief. Without Charles there, I didn’t have to confront my own cowardice of knowing better and doing nothing. There was no “I am as we are” happening. Author James Baldwin wrote, “There’s a difference between a witness and an actor.”
At eight years old, I was merely a witness. What transforms us from witness to actor?
Visibility and Invisibility
First Lady Michelle Obama used to dress incognito and walk her dogs. When she realized that people would acknowledge her dogs without looking directly at her, one of the most recognizable faces on planet Earth felt invisible.
I thought of a Navy friend of mine who told me I could never understand his heartbreak as a black man to walk along, a white person approaches, their eyes meet, and they cross the street. But hold on a second here. On one hand, we have Mrs. Obama talking about feeling invisible, like people look right through her, like she doesn’t exist.
And then we have my Navy friend talking about the heartbreak of being visible, of being seen. I wondered, for black people, is being visible worse than the alternative?
I once worked with a young black woman named Miss Love, and one time Miss Love sang a beautiful song in a language I didn’t understand. As I listened, I felt grief, like I wanted to cry, and I asked her what the song was about.
She said, “Never being able to return to my beloved home.” But still, I was curious. I asked her, “In what language were you singing?” And her whole face lit up, and with a big smile, she said, “It doesn’t matter what language it was, if you felt its meaning.”
Confronting Personal Bias
And then it happened. I was walking along, and a black man approached. Our eyes met, and he crossed the street. I began to ask myself what had happened when I realized that maybe I knew the answer.
Maybe he sat on his dad’s shoulders when he was struck with a randomly thrown rock. Maybe he’d attended a crowded summer camp with dozens of white children and had been completely ignored. Maybe he sensed my inaction in the times that I failed to do the right thing. Or maybe he just felt safer being invisible.
Facing the Storm of Racism
In our nation’s history, we have yet to outrun racism. Our navy ships, when we can’t outrun a hurricane, we’re left with a single choice, and that’s to turn directly into the storm. And as that decision is made, it’s not made lightly. Every person on that ship, from the highest-ranking, most privileged commanding officer, to the lowest-ranking deckhand, every life is exactly equivalent in worth and value and being salvageable.
If we don’t work like a unit, we all suffer the same fate, in the same deep, dark, unforgiving ocean waters. It had all come around to what I knew about racism when I was eight years old. I was right to climb out of my garbage can and see the truth of this world with my own eyes. I was right to believe that a rock thrown at demonstrators strikes us all.
Forty-four years later, I still think fondly of Miss Love. It wasn’t her job to teach me about racism, but she extended her grace to me anyway, whether I was a witness or an actor. Miss Love’s inspiration was a song sung in a language I didn’t understand, but it played and it played until one day I felt its meaning and I acted. And then I could finally, finally say, “Ubuntu, I am because we are.”
