Perspective affects progression #2

Race issues continue despite legal desegregation.

Desegregation took place on campus at the University of Georgia 50 years ago, but that doesn’t mean everyone is treated equally.

The world is “still very prejudiced, [some] don’t want to be associated with black people and its not uncommon,” Dr. Elwood Beck said. “It’s the public display of racism which was widely accepted is now not widely accepted. Now what you have is much more private.”

Beck is a sociology professor at the University of Georgia and has studied race relations for many years for his Sociology of the South class.

“The University of Georgia at that period was, not only was it segregated, but it had a different philosophy of how to relate to students,” Beck said. “It was a time of parentis, the idea and notion was that when your parents dropped you off here the university became your parent so they told you where you could go, when you had to be in your dorm, what you could do and a variety of things that if applied to you today you would just find totally and completely unacceptable. “

Beck describes how society has transformed from legal segregation to self-segregation.

“Now you are choosing to be with people that you are comfortable with,” Beck said. “That is not the same as being told you cannot go into a place.”

He said that self-segregation is empowering because people have the choice to sit with people they know they like. This in itself shows a big shift in society.

Since Beck lived through the time of segregation, he sees the difference in society now.

“I’m still amazed. The other day I was walking across on campus and a black guy and a white girl were walking. They were just talking, they weren’t holding hands, they were just talking and God knows what they were talking about,” Beck said. “But what struck me was, my God, 50 years ago he would have been killed. I mean literally he would have been killed.”

This black man would have been killed because it was unacceptable for a black man to walk and talk with a white girl.

Sara Lorusso, 63, was a white student at UGA from 1966-1970. She describes her experiences growing up as positive in regards to race relations because she was sheltered from most of the harassment and racism.

Lorusso remembers ‘colored folks’ moving out of her way when she walked down the sidewalk in her hometown.

She also recalls seeing separate water fountains and bathrooms but it never fazed her because its what she thought that’s the way it was supposed to be.

However, as Lorusso got older, she realized that wasn’t true.

“I heard a lot of terrible things about Martin Luther King Jr. and people who worked with him as they slowly began to work through the south and create the momentum for the Civil Rights Movement,” Lorusso said. “But I can tell you that I personally never had a bad experience through all that. I heard people say bad things; I still hear people say bad things.”

“We were on the progressive side of the [Civil Rights Movement] and I saw it from that angle more than from the negative angle,” Lorusso said. “So it was a very interesting experience, very eye-opening and I feel very grateful to have lived through it. And I think I have a greater appreciation for race relations than those who did not live through it.”

Lorusso saw the people who were in the movement as ‘patriots’ and thinks they made a real difference in this country and what its like now.

However, Lorusso believes there are still a lot of problems in this country and that it’s still segregated in many ways.

“Maybe more economically than racially but it kind of works out to be the same thing,” Lorusso said. “I still think we have a long way to go to being a color-blind society.”

Deanna Heibeck, 20, a biracial journalism student at the UGA, said, “I don’t fit in anywhere. With my white friends, I’m always the token black girl and with my black friends, I’m always the token white girl. Our society definitely isn’t color-blind.”

Both Beck and Lorusso agree that the face of the University is changing because the students have never experienced a truly segregated society.

“My generation remembers what segregation was like, both if you’re black or if you’re white, if you grew up in the south, you knew what segregation was like and can see the change,” Beck said. “For [the new] generation, its part of what they’ve always accepted so there are very little changes that they’ve observed in their lifetime. But yet there’s a monumental change that’s happening in southern society.”