"GOODBYE, WHITEY"
"...years after his death, I came upon this essay."
My father, Milton Oliver McGinty, was a Black man who grew up desperately poor in the Midwest in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, a time when an intelligent, deeply sensitive dark-skinned boy found his basic humanity under constant assault. When we were growing up he talked a lot about how hard it was to be poor. About how his Methodist minister father wouldn’t even have a nickel so he could see a movie or sometimes even buy enough to eat. But he said little about the personal toll the legal racism of his day took on him, and when I asked about it he’d tell me, “It just wasn’t that bad” or “I never internalized any of that stuff.”
He was lying. It was devastating and soul-crushing. Maybe he didn’t want his kids to carry the baggage he’d had to, maybe it was just too painful to talk about—who knows? But I do know that years after his death, I came upon this essay. By the time he wrote it, Dad had earned his Master’s in psychology and was working as an editor at the CIA. After being bypassed for promotions, he would quit that job to start a construction business and try to grab his piece of the American Dream. His discipline and eye for detail made him a very good businessman, but his heart was in his writing, in his essays, stories, and plays.
Understand, my dad was and is my hero. He was the pillar of strength and guidance that informed everything I’ve ever accomplished. He taught me there are few things more important than honesty and fairness, and that courage and integrity must often walk hand-in-hand. He was a patriot, a WWII veteran who worked hard, took care of his family, played by the rules, and made sure we knew to do the same. But the sad reality is that at some point my old man gave up on White America. And this essay—53 pages—was his Dear John letter. It was also a confession of sorts. Reading it brought me to tears more than once. Here’s an excerpt:
Hello, my white friend. You remember me—“Babe” to those of you who knew me as a boy, “Milt” or “Mac” or “Lefty” to others of you, depending on when you knew me and where. Hello, my white friend, with your white American legacy—the one that gave you the world on a string—and with your willingness to walk with me, to know me for a time, so long as you did not drop that string. Hello, white boys, old buddies, with the complacent attitude towards life that your strong grip on that string allowed you to have. Hello, white boys, and goodbye.
All of you knew something about what it was like for me, but you do not know about the other times—strange white boys calling me “Rastus” and “Sunshine” and the magic word “N-----”; a soda jerk handing me a paper cup while you were being served in glass mugs; a teacher refusing to let me play a wind instrument in the third-grade classroom band, instead insisting I play instruments that were not inserted in the mouth. Because of the continual pressure exerted upon me as a Black boy in a white environment, I was psychologically troubled and therefore emotionally unstable, and 28 years later I still am, though perhaps—perhaps—less so.
The insults made me belligerent and sad, sometimes simultaneously. I responded in kind, calling the hostile whites “poor woodpecker” and “poor white trash,” parrying the more subtle thrusts with clever retorts. When a man asked where I got “that Irish name,” I said, “From my father.” When a boy asked where I got “that tan”: “The same place you got that bleach.” Once when friends and I tried sneaking into a basketball game, the gate attendant said, “Are you two brothers?” and I said “No” and he said “Why not? You're the same color.” I pointed to my white friend and said, “You two are the same color. Are you brothers?” and he chuckled and let us all in free. Everyone laughed at my witticisms except me.
You see I couldn’t help but recall the times when I could think of no retort and could not fight because the person was a bigger boy or an adult. And the fact was, the time came when I was tired of fighting, tired of bluffing and being bluffed, tired of threatening and being threatened, tired of walking away from a group because someone in it had made it intolerable to me. So I stuttered, though most of you might not remember that. And one whole summer the palms of my hands itched although there was no discernible rash.
No wonder he was emotionally distant. (As a boy, I once asked my mom, “Would Dad cry if I died?”) By his 50s, he’d had hypertension for a decade. He slept badly, was a workaholic, a control freak, and likely clinically depressed. He could not tolerate any insult to his pride. When we were very small he forbade my brother and me to trick-or-treat. “It’s like begging,” he said. I once took my parents out to dinner to say how much I loved and appreciated them. Mom, almost in tears, said, “I love you too, son.” Dad could only muster, “The feeling is mutual.” That’s okay, I told myself. Old-school manliness. I thought I understood. Not. Even. Close.
—Derek McGinty
Derek McGinty spent 35 years as a broadcast newsman, mostly in his hometown of Washington D.C., and is now retired.