Over fifty years ago, William Faulkner wrote essays like "Southern Harm" and "Letter to a Northern Editor". He also participated in numerous interviews. Some that are preserved to this day. In a nutshell, Faulker's message was clear. He did not believe black Americans to be equal, but the kinder, gentler Southerners would eventually prevail in giving the 10% minority the equality, in spite of being the gross minority in the south. Faulkner thought such kindness would prevail against the hateful "white" majority that he himself admitted would argue publicly with him without compunction. But his view that black America, perhaps all the minorities in general, needed only to wait for the racists to come to their own realization, permeates our society today. They will come to it, as long as all the minorities will wait until the "whites" all agree.
Faulkner cited that black Americans could in the mid-1950s buy their own land, raise their children, even send them on to higher education. He truly believed this meant society would eventually desegregate all on its own. Faulkner was all too overly eager to say that we could not force the racists amongst us to conform. It would have to come at its own time and its own pace.
Black writers, especially the ones that had moved away from the US like James Balwin, took special offense to these ideas. They could only buy land where whites allowed them to buy land. They could only raise their children where they were allowed, and God forbid those children make the mistake of stepping out of the very tight guidelines of what was, or was not, acceptable for them. As one of my best friends has explained to me, even today, she worries that her wonderful son might meet the wrong "white" man and be gone in the blink of a trigger. She prays for his safety every day. As a mother of three dishwater blond men, this fear has never even occurred to me.
Even the higher education Faulkner eluded to was almost exclusively at HBCUs. The north was not excluded from these limitations. There are plenty of HBCUs in the north. Howard University always comes to mind for most, made a household name during the Cosby Show years. But, there is Delaware State. There is Pensole Lewis College in Detroit. There's Central State, Wilberforce University and Payne Seminary in Ohio. Even California had to have one way back when and it's still standing: Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.
Faulker's own arguments fall apart on just the sheer facts. Jim Crow laws still permeated society, and he would have had over 10% of the population wait until he could be the convince the mass majority of white America that it should be changed.
Many would argue that Faulkner had right idea. He wasn't truly racist has been an argument I heard when talking about Faulkner's material on the subject. He believed in the equality of all, but reality flies in the face of that. In a public debate with one of the bigger racists at the University of Virginia, Faulkner said of black Americans, "His tragedy may be that so far he is competent for equality only in the ratio of his white blood." This was 1958, after the Supreme Court had ordered desegregation nationwide four years earlier. This pushed the idea while surely as black Americans could be treated equally, he certainly found it doubtful most were.
Balwin's critique was clear, "Why, if he and his enlightened confreres in the south have been boring from within to destroy segregation, do they react with such panic when the walls show signs of failing?"
Still for all the efforts that any minority puts forth, the Great White Hype is the only hope. Even by 1973 when the last of the southern states were supposed to have desegregated, they had simply adjusted where black Americans could buy homes. The north and west were no different. The most racist in any and every white neighborhood simply ran around the neighborhood isolating the new minority family. There's plenty of books from wonderful black authors and comics telling those stories. Richard Pryor had a routine that addressed it, "I like living in Hawaii, because there's 500 people where I live and they're brown. And, I like that, because you can sleep at night 'cause if ya live around white people anything could happen. Not that I don't trust white people, just in the night ya know?" The Great White Hype hadn't changed even 20 years after Faulker's statement in that debate. The black Americans in this country are still waiting for the Great White Hype to equalize them with the racists in their midst.
Even now, a young black comedian on Netflix said, "Blacks and cops aren't getting along. I don't know if you've seen the news in the last 400 years." It's a bit of an exaggeration, right? NYPD wasn't founded to run down runaway slaves, but many police forces nationwide, not just in the south, were. "Slave Patrols". Yes, that is exactly what they were called, started in the south, but reached out west and up north also. The payments were lucrative for "poor" whites, so it adds to the earliest divide between the poor using race as the justification that some poor were "more special" than other poor.
Faulker's book, Light In August, has a white woman, the "heroine", searching the entire south for the father of her child. The child is "ambiguous" looking, not having their race ever specified in his book. This book tries to focus on the treatment of an "ambiguous" child while never telling the reader if the child is white or mixed. Faulker is applauded for trying to write about how the racism hits this woman and her child. In 1930s America? Get real. A single, unmarried woman and its just about confronting the hate the child bares? As a bastard? As the child of an unwed whore? The racism was the least of it, literally. That kid could've popped out blond haired, blue eyed and as white skinned as Trump without his orangutan makeup and those folks back then would still have cast that kid as bad and unwanted, regardless of who the father was. The fact the child was "ambiguous" looking was just added fodder. Speaking from first hand experience, as I often suffer the same woes that made up child goes through in the 1930s, not a single word in that so-called American classic changed a damn thing for any "ambiguous" child.
Sure, Faulkner was a great talent. I have no doubt he was not a racist for the level of racism back in his own time. He was a progressive thinker, for 1930, even in 1958 in large portions of this country, but in 2024? His opinions today would be toxic and vile. We all "just need to wait for white America" to catch up was his message. Nevermind the Native Americans or black Americans that have been waiting for centuries. Nevermind the Hispanic Americans now. Or any of us "ambiguous" folks. He has faith white America will come around, sooner or later, and we should all sit tight even if it is much, much later. His rhetoric is part of why our Great Nation is still waiting.
What he did have sadly correct? His position is the position a lot of white America still takes. Even as they watch more than half of white America vote for these hate filled motivations, it is the minority of white Americans that still want to hold onto that part of white America. "They will come around," one woman said to me recently. That was Faulkner's view in 1958 too. If only the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of segregation, the "emotional people", aka. the overly emotional white people willing to go to any lengths to hold onto their white supremacy, will eventually realize how wrong they are and everything will be equal, finally. Yeah, yeah, they will come around. That's why more than 77.3M voted for Trump in 2024. They will come around...
The real takeaway from Faulkner's almost laughable approach is that the majority of white America is all too happy to wait, and promise it will all happen someday on the merit of the good white folks finally all agreeing it has to happen. He got that correct to be sure. White America was willing to move forward when they thought more than half of them were done with racism, but now that they realize that more than half of them would happily go backwards? We already hear it in meetings. "We don't want to isolate them (white Trump voters). We want to seem inclusive (for them) also." Their version of inclusion is simple: Dis-including anyone not white enough for them. Anyone not male enough for them. Anyone they say they don't want. Like it or not, Faulkner wrote the book on how to accept minorities will never have any Rights the majority of whites are not willing to give.
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