Oral History: Lisa Kleiner (Jack Kleiner)

Abstract

In this interview, Lisa Kleiner looks back and remembers her life as a white woman in the North during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Lisa talks about what she had seen happening in the riots and protests and shares her perspective of the struggles that African Americans had while fighting for their civil and human rights. She also reflects on how she viewed African Americans in the 1960s vs. now in 2015. This interview offers the perspective of a white woman and how she felt about the violence and riots of the Civil Rights era and how it affects her, as well as other white people, today.

Research

White privilege in America has existed all throughout its history. Of course, it was a lot more obvious pre-Reconstruction and during the Jim Crow and Civil Rights era, however it still exists today. White privilege is the concept of which white people benefit from the [systemic and instiutionalized] oppression of people of color. White privilege is being taught that you are an individual rather than someone who is part of larger group of people, and thus creating the idea that racism, to white people, is acted upon by individual people rather than it being an entire system which oppresses everyone else. In the interview, Lisa Kleiner answered several questions indirectly referring to being privileged in America during the 1960s. During the interview, she states, “I don’t think people who are younger now, who are white, I don’t think that they really realize how bad things were.” Although she may not have realized it, this statement accurately portrays how white people today could not possibly understand what it’s like to live in a society that systematically oppresses you [racially]. It’s also important to note that the riots caused by literal centuries of oppression that arose in the Civil Rights era are incredibly similar to the riots happening right now because of the unjust murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and hundreds of others.

Sources

• http://www.salon.com/2015/04/10/white_americas_racial_illiteracy_why_our_national_conversation_is_poisoned_from_the_start_partner/

• http://mic.com/articles/89653/7-actual-facts-that-prove-white-privilege-exists-in-america

• http://prospect.org/article/new-jim-crow-0

Transcript exerpt

Jack: How do you view race?

Lisa: Well, um, I think race is just an, uh, artificial concept that was created by people, um, to make other people seem more different to, you know, create more differences among people than there are because really, everybody knows we all came from the same place in Africa. And over the years people changed and had different characteristics on the outside. But everybody is the same on the inside, and there’s very little difference in genetics between different races. It’s like a tiny amount. So it’s really one way people have made, people look different from each other because, I guess that’s useful to some people because if they feel frightened or something.

Jack: So do you believe it’s a socially constructed idea?

Lisa: Yes, definitely.

Jack: Do you believe that at any point in your life you used to be racist or prejudice? Especially during the height of the Civil Rights Era?

Lisa: Sure. I think everybody is prejudiced. And I think the best thing you can do is to recoginize that and try to work on it. Well, during the Civil Rights Era I was a teenager, I was the same age you are as I was explaining in the 1960s, and I think that I was - actually I was less prejudice because when I grew up I was, even though I knew black people as a child, I never thought about it and I never thought about what their situation was. And my parents weren’t prejudice at all. I mean they didn’t believe in it. So when all these things started in the ‘60s, and I found out about the lack of Civil Rights and everything, then I was really shocked. I was very shocked as a teenager to hear that and to see. I heard on television when I was your age or younger I saw the riots and I saw them letting guard dogs loose on people and water canons and, you know, all those kinds of things were happening. And they happened in my town too. There were riots. So it was kind of scary but it was something that I sort of understood, you know, that it was something really bad that happened. So that’s why people were rioting. So I don’t think it made me more prejudice but it made me know about it. I didn’t even know about some of that stuff.

Jack: Do you think that any of that affected who you are right now?

Lisa: You mean in the 1960s, did that affect how I am now, you mean?

Jack: Yes.

Lisa; Um, yeah, I think, I just, yeah because I get more scared if there’s some kind of riot, a race riot, or racial incident. It’s very scary to me because I think it could all happen again and it seems like it hasn’t gone away. These, you know, terrible prejudices that go on haven’t gone away. So it’s kind of discouraging and depressing because I feel like things haven’t gotten better in one way, and I guess some ways they have, but it’s still here. So it definitely had an impact on me as a child or a teenager because I have seen how things can be really bad. And I don’t think people who are younger now, who are white, I don’t think that they really realize how bad things were.

Jack: Were you ever in a segregated school?

Lisa: No. Not in the sense that you would - because I grew up in New Jersey and we had integrated public schools. But what happened was that, what they would call De Facto segregation because I lived in a neighborhood that was all white, so everyone who went to the school was white. And all of a sudden things changed, and this is in the 1960s around 1964, and it happened here too, the black people moved into the white neighborhoods and the white people moved out. So all of a sudden my school became from all white to all black almost over night. And we moved to another town and the school wasn’t segregated but there were, it was almost all white, but there were a few black kids in the schools. Because there were a few black families in the town and they were only supposed to live in this one certain neighborhood. So there were maybe three black kids in my high school class as a senior and there were two hundred kids.

Jack: Do you think that the schools nowadays are segregated, not by law, but significantly one race because of what happened in the ‘60s or do you think it might be that way because of racism?

Lisa: No I think it’s because of racism. Because it’s the same thing. Because after they tried to desegregate the schools in the 1960s, the white poeple all moved out or they sent their kids to private school. So it’s definitely true in some parts, like say Philadelphia, some neighborhoods are almost totally black like North Philadelphia. So everyone who goes to school there is black in the public schools. And the same is true in our neighborhood in Mt. Airey where a lot of parents, well black and white parents, send their children to private school. So it sort of depends on how much money you have now. So it’s sort of segregation by money but it’s based on racism at the bottom.

Jack:  Have you ever felt guilty or proud to be a white woman during the Civil Rights Movement?

Lisa: I felt really guilty. I don’t know if I felt proud, I mean. I felt proud when I saw all the people when Martin Luther King made his speech in Washington and they showed all the people there in the audience listening to him. I would say about a third or half the people, of all those tens of thousands of people, it looked like there were quite a few white people there, and I was really proud that there were white people who wanted to try to help. And I was always really proud that the rabbi of our temple marched with Martin Luther King and he was actually in jail with him when they had that terrible riot at the Edmunds Pettice Bridge in Alabama, in Birmingham jail. I was very proud of that.

Jack: When were you first introduced to the idea of race?

Lisa: This sounds really elitist but, you know, when I was little we had a house, and my father was a doctor. And my mother didn’t work outside the home but she had two children and in those days it was common for the doctor’s wife to have somebody come in and help clean. So my mother had the lady next door who had an African American woman who came in and cleaned for her, so my mother asked if she could come in and cleaned for us once a week, so she came in and then, you know, of course, that was probably the first black person I had seen. At that age I was probably three or four.

Jack: How different do you think the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s is from the protests in Ferguson and in Baltimore and everywhere?