<Begin Segment 3>

TI: You mentioned children and growing up. Growing up in Lakeland, what was that like for you?

CS: Well, in those days, we lived in a segregated world where the world was divided between whites and blacks. And all the blacks lived in one part of town, and all the whites lived in another part of town. The schools were segregated. I'm a product of a totally segregated school system growing up. Being a, considered a Negro person, I went to the Negro schools, we lived in the Negro neighborhoods, and so it was a way of life, not a matter of any great concern. There was no great recognition of discrimination as it truly existed, because you were born into the culture, you lived in the culture, and it didn't make any difference. The big question is, were you alive? Did you have food? Did you have family? Did you exist? And I never felt that there was anything that I aspired to that was not available to me, simply because I was not white. The fact of my not being white seemed more important to white persons than it seemed to me. And so I never had any sense of inadequacy based upon my race or my background --

TI: So when you said that --

CS: -- or economic circumstances.

TI: Yeah, so when you said it seemed to be more important to a white person rather than to you, what do you mean by that? How did that manifest itself?

CS: I never thought of myself as being, quote, "different," close quote. But most every white person I know growing up thought of me as being a Negro. And so the racial identification was more important to them than it was to me. It didn't matter to me what label was put on me, but it matters to other people what label is put on them. It -- and even now, at my age of seventy-seven, there are people that I know who are interested in who I am and what label applies to me. I have no interest in applying a label. I am aware of people as people, and I'm aware of cultures, I'm aware of languages, I'm aware of nationalities, I'm aware of politics, and all these other things, and it's all part of a large mosaic of humanity. And it makes no difference whether I apply to myself a label. For example, I identify very strongly with the Latino community in the state of Washington. There are some blacks who are very annoyed at me, because they think I am, quote, "denying my African American ancestry," unquote. But it's amusing to me, because I was a Latino when I was born. [Laughs] I was an African American when I was born, and the fact that I identify with one or the other is a personal thing to me, and it has nothing whatever to do with publicity, it has nothing whatever to do with what a community expects of me or wants of me.

And so, it is this kind of thing that causes me to consider that racial labels are irrelevant up to a point. I believe very strongly in culture. I think that we must be aware of our cultural roots. If we forget our cultural roots, then we are doomed to ignominy and failure. And so I applaud every cultural group that chooses to reach back to establish or re-establish its roots: the music, the literature, the dance, the religions, and all these things that come into focus. And they can all exist in one world, they can all exist in peace, they can all exist without rancor, and they can all exist without governmental interference which causes one group to be disrespected at the expense of their cultural identity. And I do not believe that we should follow the practice of erasing cultural identity, as we have done very largely with our Native American cultures. The Native American cultures are emerging again, into a recognition of who they are, where they came from, who their ancestors are. In the newspaper every day, there's some event relating to our Native American culture, and this is part of the thing that causes me to think as I do in this concept of a "one world."

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.