by Jessica Del Curto
Daily Lobo
Dennis Jackson said growing up in the South was what caused him to be a racist.
"We were whites in Alabama. Were whites in Alabama racist? Damn right," he said. "That's the way it was. That was the time, and that's how people grew up."
Jackson, a physician at the Student Health Center, will speak Wednesday from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the SUB about his experiences as a boy growing up in Montgomery as part of Black History Month.
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"The basis for racism is ignorance and stupidity," he said. "I can say that I grew up with that."
He said although he never heard his dad make a racist comment, racism was just a part of life in the South.
"It was so pervasive," Jackson said. "It's like that blue sky out there - it was there all the time, and people knew it was there, but they would say, 'That's just the way things are.'"
But Jackson knew from an early age things weren't right.
He said historical events, like Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white person in the front of a Montgomery public bus or the death of a boy who was killed because he talked to a white woman made him question racism. He was 14 at the time.
Jackson said he went to a Catholic school, and racial issues were never addressed.
"I was born 80 years after the Civil War," he said. "Slavery was abolished but not segregation. It was pretty miserable in that it was sort of a social schizophrenia. It was not to be addressed openly."
Shiame Okunor, a UNM professor and former director of African American studies, said he questions the idea of a reformed racist. He said the important thing is what a person does with their knowledge after they realize racism is wrong.
"We can intellectualize as much as we want to," Okunor said. "It's good to be a reformed racist, and in other words become a human being. So what do you do now that you've seen the light?"
Jackson said he never protested racism when he lived in the South because he was just a kid.
"As much as I gained insight as to what's going on, I'm not a real social person," he said. "I'm not going to put myself out in front and wave flags and shout and holler."
He said that in 1970 after one of his six children came home from school and used the n-word, he moved to New Mexico.
"My wife and I said no more. We're not going to raise our kids in a racist society. We're going to go find some place that's more tolerant and has a little bit more sanity about what's going on," Jackson said.
He said he never experienced any backlash from southerners for the decision to move west.
He is speaking to UNM students about racism because people can learn from his experience, he said, and hopes to answer questions.
"If you feel you've got something you don't understand about another person because their culture is different from yours, you better ask them questions about it," Jackson said.
Freshman Michaela Simpson doesn't know if it is possible for a person to wipe a slate clean of racism.
"I think on the surface a person can change, but I think that deep down, he'll always hold certain preconceived notions, and he'll always have certain race issues - just because that's the way he was raised," she said.
Jackson said he wants to live his life as honestly as he can.
"I'm not a proselytizer," he said. "I just simply lived my life, and I had a bunch of kids and I didn't want them growing up with racist attitudes."
