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Thursday, September 12, 2002 |
"Born in the Fifties"
A co-worker mailed this piece of fifties nostalgia on a general mailing list today. This is my reply.I was born in 1957: what kind of world was I born into?
Schools were still segregated when I went to grade school; the only black person I knew was the cleaning woman at the local YMCA. Neighborhoods were segregated, too; I only saw my friend Joyce when I went swimming at the YMCA, because her family could not buy a house on our side of town: Asians weren't welcome.
Prime time television carried only those shows that did not offend advertisers. There were no filters or ratings, because your television had been pre-censored for you. The only black people I saw on television were Amos and Andy (two white guys in makeup), and the only Asians I saw were on old Charlie Chan movies (Charlie himself was played by another white guy in makeup).
In the 1950s, everyone knew that John Kennedy could never be President, because he was Catholic. No one thought a woman or a Jew would ever be nominated as a vice presidential running mate.
My friend Dr. Rose would have been told she should study nursing, instead of medicine, and my friend Mary the engineer would have been advised to teach grade school.
I would have no gay or lesbian friends, for none of them would dare admit their preferences. They would not be in loving relationships; they would be in the closet and alone.
In the 1950s, the unions my uncles belonged to were open only to white men, and supervisors could still complain that the company was hiring too many "coloreds".
In the 1950s, my high school teacher Mr. Warwick, who was black, had to join the army to get an education; in the 1970s he would remind his students of the opportunities we had that he did not.
"Half a dozen mothers ran outside when you fell off your bike", perhaps because women weren't expected to work. In the neighborhood I live in now, a mother can also have a Ph.D., and their daughters certainly prefer it that way.
The author says that "The only hazardous patch of material you knew about was the patch of grass burrs", as a result of which we kept right on poisoning land and water , creating the health hazards of Love Canal and thousands of other contaminated sites. Ignorance is not bliss; it is ignorance.
I could go on, but why bother? We cannot go back, and that's a good thing.
[update 9/13/2002: The person who sent out the original email kindly offered to send out my response to the entire list, and offered some thoughts of their own on growing up in the fifties. Bravo!]
