“Main Street” is many things to Americans. It has meanings both real and imagined. It may represent anything from “everything in the country that is not Wall Street,” to an accurate description of the one place in every American town where shops were concentrated in tight rows on both sides of the street and all of the town's parades occurred. There are places where it bears the name, “Main Street,” although those places are rare. It was simply a five block section of 122nd Street in my town. No matter. It is where you mean when your friend asks you where you are going and you respond, “up the street.”
It now appears to be taking on a new meaning as a name for the America that some people want to return to. The country that they want back. I call it “the white America,” and Main Street is becoming code for the old white America. The people who want their country back are almost all white, and the image of that great, historical America is the America of the 1950s, which in photographs only displays white people. It's all very silly, really.
YouTube is full of nostalgic videos of historical America, and the 1950s feature prominently in this fetish. The Fifties are over-represented in these memory lane videos, and this is due, I believe, to the fact that Americans suddenly had more disposable income, and because cameras and film had become more generally available. I must admit that I feel an almost planetary pull on my emotions when I watch videos about the 1950s. It all looks so nice, and so familiar.
There are the familiar old stores. Every Main Street seems to have a Woolworth's. But not many chain stores, more of the single owner-operator kind of thing. Somebody gets a degree in pharmacology and opens a drug store; there's a shoe store that bears a family name. Shoe repair shops! Do they even have those anymore? We throw everything away now. Stores passed from generation to generation, but not for long. The 1950s were the end of a brief period of continuity in the history of Main Street. The traffic is always so light, and parking always seems like it would be easy. There are lots of cute kids, of which I was one, and the pretty moms are wonderful. Even in the crowds watching parades, everyone is white. There are lots of parades, flags, uniforms. Lots of white people.
The moving pictures taken on vacation also seem to feature only white people. Do I need to put, “nostalgia 1950s black america” in the search box? I admit that I've never tried it. They must be out there, somewhere. The reason is simple. Black Americans have always been with us.
The white America is a myth. It is a lie, and it is a scandal. It is a reflection of the reign of terror that kept non-white people out of sight before the 1960s and 1970s. Of course there were black Americans, gay Americans, Asian Americans, all kinds of Americans, but the narrative was carefully controlled to remain WHITE.
The America that certain Americans want to take-back never existed in the first place.
The Democrats really got the ball rolling on integration, and no one should forget that. FDR did his part, which is to say a politician's part, let's not piss anybody off. The United States Army doesn't get nearly enough credit for advancing the cause of racial equality. They were officially integrated during the Korean “Conflict,” and fully integrated not much after that. Hollywood did its part. Nothing noisy or showy, just putting black faces into the Little Rascals, and some sympathetic characters played by black actors, and finally putting black actors into roles that had been written for white people (Sidney Poitier in “The Bedford Incident,” 1965) Sure they dressed up white actors to play a character from the less popular races many times, but come on! We're looking for the good here!
Black Americans certainly did more than their share in the 1960s to help America come up to speed. God gave man free will on an individual basis, so I will leave it to you all as individuals to assign credit or blame for the actions of black Americans in the 1960s. Be careful, though, and be sure to walk a mile in the other man's moccasins. I choose to give MLK and others full credit for the choice to proceed in peace, seeking harmony. I also choose to find righteousness in the indignant violence in American cities that resulted from things involving George Whitmore, Jr., Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, the assassination of MLK, and many other grievous insults inflicted on the black community.
By now all of those decades of hard work are being dismantled by the usual suspects. Republican politicians, hand in hand with a wholly bought and paid for so-called news media, and augmented today by an amoral, profit driven social media cabal that is getting richer by the minute while they destroy the community that supports them. (Google “mccormick newspapers” to get some idea of what FDR was up against. Fox faux News got nothing on them.)
The last years have been very disappointing. All it took was the election of a black president, which opened numerous doors to crazy town, followed by the election of a clinically insane white man who only wanted to burn the house down. Stupidity was elevated over erudition, every individual was promoted to Emperor of His Own Domain, and most people were so busy trying to keep their heads above water that they had no energy left to notice or fight the flood of ignorance.
Please bear in mind that there is no mythical lost America to return to, white or otherwise. The present version is all we have; we are stuck with it. And please understand that the present version is probably as good as any that have proceeded it. It was never perfect, our country. There was never a “shining city on the hill.” Accept your own faults; accept Thomas Jefferson's faults; accept all that has come before, because that's all there is. Histories are like our parents: we all have them, and it is our job to find a way to accept them and do the best that we can.
So you can call me a “demon-rat,” and consider this a waste of time, or you can say, “you know what? That fellows got a point.” Whatever you decide, thanks for reading.
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