Separate Pasts: Growing Up White In The Segregated South

“Blacks, adults and children alike, called my father and grandfather mister; my mother and grandmother, miss. When a black person approached a doorway at the same time as a white adult, the black stepped back and sometimes even held the door open for the white to enter. The message I received from hundreds of such signals was always the same. I was white; I was different; I was superior.”

Segregation was a set of laws that restricted the free movement of African Americans in society, dictating where they could live, eat, and work. But it was also a set of social conventions. Throughout the memoir, McLaurin highlights how these laws prevented African Americans from participating fully in society. This lack of participation was then used as evidence of their inferiority. For instance, someone points out there are no African American quarterbacks as a confirmation of African American inferiority. Segregation prevented African Americans from crossing the color line in professional sports. In Chapter 1, McLaurin details how he was raised to believe that he was superior. McLaurin reflects on how the superiority of whiteness was asserted through day to day encounters in which African American people were expected to show deference to whites. The above quote is an example of McLaurin’s practice of using his own changing beliefs to back up his claims.

“Every working day I talked and joked with blacks, waited on blacks, delivered groceries for them, and observed them closely. As 'the other,' aliens in my white world and natives of another world that was to some extent an alternative to mine, I found them much more interesting than Granddaddy’s white friends and customers.”

The social codes of segregation limited the full participation of African Americans in society. Within this context, McLaurin is fascinated by African American customers because they are unknown. When he starts working in the store, he is eager to know more about them, reflecting his intellectual curiosity. This desire to learn more about African Americas is ultimately what leads to his rejection of segregation. In this context, McLaurin is a young man, and his age allows him to have more genuine encounters with African Americans than an adult male might. For example, when he returns to the town from university, now a man of 18, Jerry refers to him as "Mr.," revealing his shifting status.

“That this extended period of close association with blacks came during my adolescence magnified the impact of that experience upon me. It came at a time when I had begun to question the values and beliefs of my society. My association with blacks would continue, as did the questioning, until I left Wade. A developing intellectual curiosity set me apart from many of the white residents of the community, not completely, but enough to cause me to feel different at times, and very isolated, sometimes enough to hurt. The whites of Wade, young and old, seemed satisfied with village life, if not with their economic status within it. They accepted Wade’s social mores, its religious beliefs, its racist dogma.”

A dominant theme in Separate Pasts is the importance of questioning received wisdom. Here, McLaurin reflects on how his intellectual curiosity set him apart from the community. Wade isn’t traditional or timeless but rather willfully ignorant to the currents of change. This quote foreshadows the moment in Chapter 3 when McLaurin writes about how he came to question the validity of segregation and the role Street played in his intellectual growth. Throughout his memoir, McLaurin highlights moments when white people’s justifications for segregation ring hollow.

“I knew, for I had been told since birth, that whites were superior to blacks (and for that matter, that members of my family were superior to most whites). On the other hand, I had also been taught that one should never mistreat a black, insult a black, or purposely be rude to a black. One was never to behave badly toward blacks, partially because of moral imperatives.”

In Chapter 2, McLaurin grapples with the racism that he was raised with. He realizes that while his family is less overtly racist than some other people in the community, they are not less racist. Rather, McLaurin highlights the hypocrisy of a society that argued that one should be kind of African Americans to show good breeding rather than recognizing their humanity. Later in the chapter, McLaurin reflects that when his grandmother reminded them that “Colored people have souls too” (30), she likely assumed they would be servants in heaven. This paternalistic racism was insidious and prevalent in the South in this period.

“A split second after placing the needle in my mouth, I was jolted by one of the most shattering emotional experiences of my young life. Instantaneously an awareness of the shared racial prejudices of generations of white society coursed through every nerve in my body. Bolts of prejudice, waves of prejudice that I could literally feel sent my head reeling and buckled my knees. The realization that the needle I still held in my mouth had come directly from Bobo’s mouth, that it carried on it Bobo’s saliva, transformed my prejudices into a physically painful experience. I often had drunk from the same cup as black children, dined on food prepared by blacks. It never occurred to me that such actions would violate my racial purity. The needle in my mouth, however, had been purposely drenched with Negro spit, and that substance threatened to defile my entire being.”

In Chapter 2, McLaurin recounts a pivotal moment in his life. In the context of playing pick-up basketball with Bobo, a young African American boy, he has a visceral reaction to Bobo’s saliva in his month. His internal turmoil shows him how deeply he has internalized the racism of his parents and grandparents.

“Ironically, the same prejudices that filled me with loathing and disgust also demanded that I conceal my feelings. The emotional turmoil exploding inside me had to be contained, choked off. Not for a second could I allow Bobo to suspect that I was in the least upset, or to comprehend the anguish his simple act of moistening the needle with his saliva had caused me. The rules of segregation which I had absorbed every waking moment of my life, and which were now an essential part of my consciousness, demanded that I retain my position as the superior, that I remain in control of the situation.”

In this scene, McLaurin is overwhelmed by the exchange of saliva with Bobo. However, as a way of asserting the superiority of his whiteness, he maintains his composure. This response is rooted in racial stereotypes. White supremacists argued that African Americans were overly emotional, irrational, and deviant, requiring white people to police their behavior in order to be productive members of society. By pretending nothing has happened, McLaurin asserts his control. McLaurin’s refusal to acknowledge the challenge to his whiteness mirrors the refusal of the South to acknowledge the growing murmurs of the civil rights movement.

“But the knowledge, the understanding that segregation was so powerful a force, that it could provoke such violent emotional responses within me, for the first time raised questions in my mind about the institution, serious questions that adults didn’t want asked and, as I would later discover, that they never answered.”

In the conclusion to Chapter 2, McLaurin reflects on how much the encounter with Bobo affected him. Before this moment, race wasn’t something he thought about. While it shaped social interactions, he accepted it blindly. His overtly racist reaction shows him that his good breeding and politeness does not negate racism. In this moment, he realizes that under segregationist logic, he lives in a different world than Bobo, and that these worlds cannot not be bridged without a threat to white superiority. That Bobo’s blackness threatens him so much also points to the hollow arguments that white supremacy relied on. This will inform his later questions about segregation.

“I suspected that Street was the most intelligent person in the village, except perhaps for a young Presbyterian minister who served our church during my last three years of high school, and the best read as well. My conversations with Street were the high points of my days, yet I knew that segregationist philosophy held that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. Street challenged all the stereotypes about blacks that the society demanded I hold. It was his intelligence, combined with one casual remark, that caused me to understand how Street, and other blacks like him, challenged the entire system.”

Although Separate Pasts discusses many moments that lead to McLaurin’s intellectual and moral awakening, his early discussions with Street are perhaps the most important. Street’s eccentric behavior and willingness to defy social norms attract McLaurin. However, Street’s true impact on McLaurin is in pointing out the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in received wisdom. Throughout the rest of the book, McLaurin will apply Street’s method of asking uncomfortable questions in a series of different contexts. The result is a rejection of segregation as morally unjust.

“In my silent anger, I understood that a ‘crazy nigger’ and I knew more, thought more, and, most important, had more desire to learn than did any of my grandfather’s friends gathered about the heater that night. Suddenly I saw that despite his lack of formal education Street’s quest for knowledge made him their intellectual superior. Calling him a crazy nigger, I knew, wouldn’t change that fact. At that moment my respect for the opinions of Granddaddy’s friends slipped, never to be completely restored.”

Throughout the book, McLaurin returns to discussions among his grandfather’s friends in the general store. This quote describes an interaction between McLaurin and his grandfather’s friends. To a young McLaurin, they represent authority, and he listens carefully to their opinions. One day, the men are discussing canned food. Eager to join their conversation, McLaurin tells them that tin cans are made of steel coated in tin. McLaurin was taught this by Street, who read an article about tin in a popular magazine. The men laugh and call Street crazy. In this moment, McLaurin realizes that Street is smarter than this group of white men. Questioning their authority is an important step for a young McLaurin to reject the social codes of the segregated South.

When I finally realized that Street was aware of his intellectual superiority, that he saw whites as ignorant, yet another prop was knocked from beneath the framework of my segregationist rationale.”

In the previous quote, McLaurin realizes that his grandfather’s friends are intellectually uncurious. However, his realization of the shortcomings of their knowledge and, by extension, authority is amplified when he understands that Street also recognizes his own intellectual superiority. In this moment, McLaurin begins to understand that African Americans do not see whites as superior. This is a critical insight that he develops throughout the text.

“On such days the visit of one girl could generate several elaborately detailed dreams of conquest; a visit by two or three would provoke a veritable orgy of sexual fantasy, although my creativity was inhibited by both my limited experience and my lack of exposure to the fantasies of others, as I lived in a pre-Hefnerian world.”

This quote is reflective of the honest tone of McLaurin’s memoir. In his detailed recollection of young women he was sexually attracted to, McLaurin vividly reconstructs how he felt as a young man. He conveys his confusion about gender and race and the complicated feelings of desire he felt for African American women and girls. His honesty is sometimes uncomfortable. Later in the chapter, he contrasts his sexual desire with his desire to connect to Betty Jo, a beautiful young African American woman whom he has a crush on, revealing the complex ways that segregation separated people. While the other anecdotes in Chapter 4 are of a sexual nature, with Betty Jo McLaurin is interested in a human connection. She is a significant figure as McLaurin realizes that she is no different than the white girls he dates. In this moment, McLaurin articulates how much segregation isolates people.

“Perhaps I felt more keenly than most whites the guilt produced by the clash of segregationist doctrine and practice and the readily perceived human dignity of individual blacks. I doubt it.”

In this quote, McLaurin articulates a core but often unspoken argument in his memoir. His subjective narrative style is a way of drawing the reader in, but he has a clear political message. McLaurin uses his own experiences to make a broad indictment of segregation. Rather than suggesting that he was uniquely ethical or moral, he argues that most people know that racism is wrong. People avoided asking questions about race because they knew the justifications were hollow. The guilt that he describes in the South is a tangible and predictable response to the knowledge that segregation was dehumanizing. In this quote, he reveals that readers are not supposed to read this memoir as his own unique experience, but rather use his life story to draw connections to their own experiences of race.

“Deferential behavior on the part of blacks, I had discovered, made me feel ill at ease, for what reason I did not yet understand. […] The stark poverty endured by many of Wade’s blacks also disturbed me.”

Chapter 5 centers on the guilt McLaurin felt as a young man and how he was troubled by segregation on an individual level. This quote follows an anecdote he relates about driving customers home from the store. He likes driving, but he becomes stressed out by the social norms that govern who can sit in the front seat of an automobile. Because McLaurin is a teenager, the etiquette of segregation is unclear. He recounts several confusing incidents in which people are unsure of where they should sit. His discomfort with these moments reflects his unease with the lived reality of segregation. McLaurin is raised to believe that he is superior to African Americans. At this moment, McLaurin articulates his growing awareness that the doctrines of white supremacy do not align with lived experience.

 “I responded with anger to the undeniable reality of their extreme poverty. It was an affront to my world of position and plenty, one I preferred not to acknowledge.”

McLaurin recounts an anecdote about Bruce Carter, an African American logger. The poverty of Bruce and his family makes McLaurin profoundly uncomfortable. He deals with his guilt the way many white people dealt with guilt: He is nice to the kids and gives them candy. His rising awareness of inequality continues to erode segregationist logic. In this quote, McLaurin links class inequality with race, deepening his analysis of how segregation structured inequal relations.

“And so, the guilt from my episode with Sam remained, as did the guilt from hundreds of lesser racial confrontations, a legacy of my region that I would put into perspective only after years of internal conflict and the emotionally tumultuous years of the civil rights revolution.”

After taunting Sam with his friends, McLaurin is overwhelmed by guilt. Throughout the text, McLaurin references the emotional and psychological costs of segregation. His race-baiting of Sam is his most shameful moment of guilt, but he draws a connection between this overt act of racism and the smaller, more everyday ways in which he and other white community members perpetuated white supremacy. Guilt was commonplace in the segregated South, highlighting that people were aware of the inequalities perpetuated by the racial order of segregation.

“At the time I was too in awe of Granddaddy to understand that he had not acted solely because of his desire to help Viny, that, to some degree, he had acted because his word had been challenged. He had told Wilson that Viny needed aid, he had asked Wilson to consider her case, and he had told Viny that he had talked to Wilson. Not only had his word been questioned but, as he saw it, when no aid was forthcoming, his position of authority as a link between dependent blacks and the county bureaucracy was challenged.”

A 16-year-old McLaurin is confused by his grandfather’s willingness to help Viny Love. This quote is reflective of McLaurin’s narrative style, which adds analysis that he has developed in hindsight. While McLaurin does not fully understand at the time that his grandfather is not acting solely out of kindness, the adult McLaurin recognizes the complex motivations behind his actions. McLaurin concludes by linking this incident to the broader rules and regulations of segregation, which limited the ways in which whites and African Americans could relate to each other. In this way, both Viny Love and Lonnie are victims of the system, though the effects are not equal.

“As proponents of an ideology of hatred and fear, Wade’s white segregationists relied heavily on stereotypes to support their claim that blacks were inferior. They also exercised their power within the society to see that the image of blacks that they created became a reality. Blacks, they maintained, were incapable of economic progress without white sponsors, unable to administer organizations or institutions successfully without white help, and generally unfit to hold positions of authority.”

Racial paternalism is an important concept throughout Separate Pasts. In this quote, McLaurin plainly articulates how paternalist attitudes functioned to preserve the power of white people. Segregationists created the conditions within which African Americans had to ask white people for help. McLaurin argues that kindness can also be violence.

“For a black in Wade to have challenged openly and directly the segregationist regime would have been unthinkable, at least before the end of the decade. To express resentment openly, even in jest, could have proved fatal.”

McLaurin describes overhearing his father telling what he believed to be a humorous story about Elliot Ray and Bill Williams. Elliot is an ugly African American man with a great personality. Bill, a white man, is ugly and mean. One day, Elliot makes a joke about Bill being uglier than he is, and Bill explodes in anger, promising to get his gun. A group of men prevent Bill from going home to get his gun and diffuse the situation. McLaurin is horrified, realizing that the men’s laughter was a way of denying the violence at the heart of segregated society. McLaurin provides further evidence by relaying an anecdote about a white man who was acquitted in court, despite having killed his wife and the African American man with which she was allegedly having an affair.

“Suddenly I not only realized that blacks saw Granddaddy much differently than I did, but I also began to grasp the significance of that difference in perspective. Granddaddy was not universally admired; by some he was viewed not just with occasional anger but with permanent mistrust and envy, perhaps even hatred. My initial response to that insight was to condemn blacks as ingrates, unworthy of Granddaddy’s attention. Time and experience would change that original verdict.”

In this quote, we see McLaurin’s narrative method of framing a memory in the past with foreshadowing of how his understanding of the situation would change. In Chapter 6, McLaurin describes an incident with Dora Lou Smith, a poor African American woman who cleaned the bathrooms at the store. McLaurin overhears a conversation between Dora Lou and her son, who finds money in the bathroom. When the boy goes to return the money to Lonnie, Dora Lou reacts with anger and tells her son that Lonnie has enough money. He realizes that Dora Lou does not trust Lonnie to return it to the person who lost it. This incident is an important moment in his recognition that the world that Dora Lou inhabits is not the same world he lives in, and that her perception of the situation reflects her experiences.

“The emotional impact of Miss Carrie’s kitchen produced the physical responses one feels as a roller coaster begins its earthward plunge: the tightening of the stomach; the quick gasp for breath; the queazy, sinking feeling inside. Stunned by the appearance of the room, I searched for words while bursts of understanding exploded through my brain.”

McLaurin’s visit to Miss Carrie and Jerry’s house marks his final rejection of the racial logic of the segregated South. McLaurin is shocked by their poverty and has a visceral, physical response. He realizes that their having so little Is not a result of unworthiness but rather of the restrictions of segregation. At this moment, McLaurin rejects the racial etiquette with which he was raised.

“Members of the older generation, burdened with a segregated past, sought to accommodate themselves to the new reality, and to the future, as best they could. Whites continued to cling to their racial prejudices, some all the more tenaciously because of the drastic changes in a system which they so thoroughly understood, and in which they were so privileged. Some blacks, too, found change difficult, if welcome. Many, without position, wealth, or education, saw little change in the basic patterns of their daily lives. For them, the change had come too late. Meaningful change awaited their children, perhaps, and their grandchildren but had eluded them.”

In this quote, McLaurin draws out the theme of institutional change versus individual/community change. While desegregation provided legal rights to African Americans, the legacies of segregation lingered. The generations of structural inequality ensured that many African Americans remained poor. The attitudes of white people also changed slowly and unevenly. Throughout the book, McLaurin is careful to point out that while segregation ended, it hasn’t gone away. His concept of separate pasts highlights the ways in which the past remains in the present. Institutional reform alone can’t fix racism. Social attitudes must change alongside laws.

“There was nothing left for me to say that my father would understand. He was pleased with his gift, and from his perspective, I know, he had reason to be. He remained, spiritually, emotionally, a resident of the Wade I had left and to which I could never return. Yet it was in that Wade, that village past, that our present bond was forged, and it was in that Wade that the bond existed still. And so, aware of and linked by our separate pasts, we rode toward home and the celebration of a family Christmas.”

In the Epilogue, McLaurin articulates the idea of separate pasts. When McLaurin returns home for Christmas in 1984, the Wade of his youth is gone. Change happens on a personal level, most prominently in the death of his grandparents several years earlier. It is also at the institutional level. Society is desegregated, and African Americans are active in local politics. Despite the changes, however, McLaurin and his father are still connected to the past and its lingering legacies. His father has not changed his worldview to reflect the changing world, which leaves a gulf between the two men. Here, McLaurin suggests that there is more work to be done in moving past segregation.

“The approaching centennial anniversary of Wilmington’s racial violence has forced both the black and white communities to face the city’s heritage of racism and segregation as they prepare to commemorate the events of 1898. Ongoing debates over the nature of that commemoration have sparked passionate responses from both sides of Wilmington’s continuing racial divide, debates in which I have participated as a historian, a university representative, and a citizen of Wilmington with vivid memories of a segregated Wade.”

In the Afterword, McLaurin proves historical context for his memoir. He also provides insight into his motivations for writing it. The Afterword suggests that desegregation has been an incomplete process. As a historian, he argues that a deeper understanding of the past is necessary for things to change.