Impact of racism on whites
Lorie explains the psychological impact of racism on whites. She argues that white isolation from colored peoples produced a superiority complex. She maintains that television reaffirms white culture as dominant, but increasing television addictions further isolates whites from other races and cultures.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Barbara Lorie, February 26, 2001. Interview K-0211. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- MELISSA FROEMMING:
-
You've answered a lot of my questions as we went along, which
is wonderful. There are two things that you said, one of them which was:
you referred to - I think this was very astute - both blacks and whites
as being victims. Which seems to be very much the
case. Could you talk about that a little bit? I guess more on the white
side, whites as victims as well.
- BARBARA LORIE:
-
We are so limited in our worldview, white people. We are missing out on
the great cultural beauties that three-fourths of the world have to
offer. We are in our own culture, we have missed out. You know, we think
Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, and whoever, have got to be it. But all of our
music in this country comes from black people. And anybody who denies
that if full of it, you know? Blues, and jazz, and gospel, are the
foundation of modern music worldwide. It's not just in the
United States. You go to Africa, you go to Morocco, you go to England,
you go to Egypt, you go anywhere and you hear the roots that have come
from the diaspora of blacks in the world. And that's true of
Latinos, of Asians. We are so limited because we have been dealt this
superiority complex historically. The rigidity of our white superiority
has denied us the glories of other cultures to be integrated within our
lives. I feel that so deeply. I can't tell you how strongly I
feel that we have been denied the knowledge, the prescience, the joy of
other cultures by he limitations of our own western education. So it
wasn't until integration that you finally had blacks saying,
"Hello, we're here." The center, what is
it, the Sonja B. Haynes Center that is being built is such a marvelous
thing right there in the middle of the… "Sorry,
honeys. We're right here in the middle of this white campus.
Here we are." I love it, I love it. I just think it is about
time, you know? We're only a hundred years late, a couple of
hundred years. So I feel very sorry for white people who are so rigid in
their beliefs and their traditions that it limits them in what they
read, what they listen to on the radio, what they
watch on television. Of course, we shouldn't watch television
anyway, because that's the biggest addiction of the world
right now. That they don't step outside and see what the
glories are of other cultures. That's mainly what I feel as a
white person. I feel very strongly about television. I feel it is such a
terrible drug. It's so far worse than any drug, so far worse
than heroine, and crack cocaine, and dope, it is the drug of the world.
And we have done it. The white culture, and white men, mostly, have done
it. White Anglo Saxon men, thank you very much, are people who have laid
this culture out as the culture. When you go to Egypt and you see
"Dallas" on the television, for god's sake,
what the hell is that all about? Give me strength! It's
insane, it's total insanity. "Ah, I love
you." And nails hanging off their fingernails like fangs. Okay,
in answer to that, that's enough.