The Conflict In Melton A. Mclaurin's Separate Pasts

The United States has had a problem of racism dating back to conflicts between European settlers and Native Americans. In the 1950s, racism was at the core of the conflict of the time, and the motivation behind segregation. Melton A. McLaurin’s book, Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South, shows his conflict with accepting, understanding, and challenging the idea of the “etiquette of segregation”. The descendant of a comparatively wealthy white family, McLaurin’s early life failed to allow him to imagine the reality of the dynamic between the black and white population of Wade, North Carolina. As he aged, McLaurin began to realize that the residents of Wade seemed almost unanimously to follow an unspoken, but race-defined, …show more content…
One of the unspoken rules was centered on the idea that separate did not mean equal. White people expected to be considered superior, but did not treat the black community disrespectfully. They however, still saw black people as inferior. McLaurin held no contemptment for the black community, yet still violated this code of respect in one case in which he felt his superiority was being challenged. Having placed a needle in his mouth that had previously been in the mouth of his black companion, Bobo, he instantly began to feel a racially-charged rage that his white purity was being violated by Bobo. After having angrily thrown his basketball at Bobo hard enough to elicit anger, he reacts by saying, “I had triumphed. I had preserved my status as the superior. I had prevented Bobo from guessing that his actions had destroyed my emotional composure.” (39). McLaurin’s need to lash back out in retaliation for something Bobo could not have known he had done demonstrates the necessity of the white power structure to the white community, even if it meant breaking a tenement of their moral code on handling the black