Review of Southern Racial Issues in Jimmy Carter's Memoir An Hour Before Daylight
Southerners, even racially sensitive Southerners such as Jimmy Carter,often claim that they understand the 'true' plight of Black Southernpeople. This statement, so strange on its surface given the racialintolerance that has long marked the South, is made because whiteSoutherners frequently live at greater proximity to individuals whomidentify themselves as African Americans. Even advocates of segregation inthe pre-civil rights era in the South often had Black maids and Blackindividuals take care of their children. Whites in the North might endorseracial tolerance in the abstract, but had little contact with AfricanAmericans on a personal basis in the pre-civil rights era and even Former President Jimmy Carter, and those who advocate the point ofview that Southern people of a liberal ilk have a greater understanding ofthe Black plight in America may thus have legitimacy in their advocacy oftheir greater tolerance in comparison to Northern whites. It is ind
Daily, even in adesegregated South, Black individuals experienced an assault on theirpersonhood and their rights to be a fully-fledged American. Carter states that in his Southern community, inGeorgia our [white and Black family's] daily existence was almost totallyintertwined" (20). But Carter's two contradictory regardinghis knowledge of Black life and his inability to experience true intimacywith Blacks hints at the fact that no matter how much understanding a whiteman may glean, Northern or Southern, he can never truly walk a mile in aBlack man's shoes in America. (36) Ultimately, Carter was able to grasp opportunities that his fellowAfrican American neighbors were denied. eedperhaps better and more humane from a human rights standpoint to understandsomeone as an individual human being rather than to advocate the bettermentof 'the race' in an abstract fashion, as Northerners who came to the Southto help the cause of civil rights but had never known a Black person as afriend or associate. How many White Northerners of thesame period could say the same' Carter traces his early exposure to such a racial equality ofexperience and a racial inequality of opportunity of remuneration to hislater human rights advocacy, after he became President, as well as hisearly understanding of racial turmoil. He saw that Black Americas sweat as much as the Whitelaborers, ate as much, and yet were paid far less. "There was always some restraint"in the intimacy between the races. Carter clearlygained much and learned much from the lived reality of his experience,living in proximity to Blacks. He knew that the peanuts harvested couldnot have brought economic gain to the community, without the efforts ofBlack families. Yet, later Carter admits to thereader, that he knew, even when he was a young, even before he left Georgiafor the Navy, an education as an engineer, and subsequently thegovernorship of Georgia and the presidency of the United States, that evenin the closest of his relationships with a black person, unspoken andspoken barriers between the White liberal Carter and the Black men andwomen he knew prevented complete bonding. The recognizable structures of socialsegregation that prevented the formation of truly fluid and easyrelationships between Carter and his black friends meant he cannot"understand the plight of black families" (53) as he claims, for Carter asa white man may walk in the neutral, as simply a man, but in the South,someone who is Black is always identified first and foremost by his or herrace and saw his opportunities limited for this reason in a way Cartercannot understand in the lived reality of his own personal, as opposed toobserved experience. He experienceddiscrimination, not in the abstract, but knowing that his family andlifestyle could not have existed nor been supported without the struggle,hands, and strength of Black Americans.
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Acceptance Essays
