Being in NC during the Civil Rights Movement: a South Asian perspective...

So yesterday in Tamil, I got Dr. Vivek off topic by asking him what it was like being in North Carolina during the Civil Rights Movement. He came from India to NC State in 1961 to do his Masters in Psychology, I believe. He was 24 years old at the time, but he didn't know about segregation before he came to the NC, so he certainly had no idea about the racial tensions that existed during the time.

I was curious to know whether he was treated as a black person, or whether he was allowed to associate with white people. I had assumed that it would consistently be the former, but actually sometimes he was treated better than black people. Anyway, the first time he found out that discrimination existed was when he got on a bus in Raleigh. On the bus, there were only 2 people: one was a well dressed white man who was in the front, and the other was a older black woman who was in the back. He got on the bus and sat next to the white man, and then the bus driver, of course, told him to move to the back. Dr. Vivek asked him, "why? There are so many seats available." The driver didn't explain and kept insisting that he move to the back of the bus, but Dr. Vivek kept asking questions because he didn't understand why he was being asked to move. The white man chimed him telling him he should move. Finally, the bus driver stopped the bus, went up to him and told him to move to the back of the bus. Dr. Vivek was still completely perplexed by all this, but the black woman beckoned to him and said, "Come sit next to me, baby" in a motherly way, so he moved to sit next to her just because she was being nice to him.

He also told us about how there were all these things that happened that he didn't understand at the time, but realizes now had to do with racial discrimination. When he first got here, only one street on NC State's campus was integrated, the rest of the campus was still largely segregated. For his first semester, the school put him in an all-white dorm, with a white roommate even. He said he didn't really have any problems except that one day he found a dead pigeon placed outside his door. At the time, he just shrugged it off, but now he realizes it was a threat intended for him. He also told some other stories about traveling to rural North Carolina and also trying to find an apartment in Raleigh with another international Indian student. He also talked about how some of his white friends would talk to him about black people were inferior, expecting him to agree.

I find all this very fascinating, because he had no idea that there was racial discrimination here, and had to sort of figure out on his own what actions was taboo and what was ok. I imagine to an outsider it seems pretty arbitrary. But he was also talking about how having grown up with a different, and sometimes more strict, caste system in India made it easier to comprehend. Crazy how things change after 30 years. I mean, there is still a lot to work on obviously, but we've made a good bit of progress. I mean for me, the notion of segregation seems completely ridiculous but yet, it was reality for basically everyone over 40 years old. A reality that they all accepted because it made sense to them. Well at least to the white people. So the fact that we have an entire generation of people who now believe that segregation as a social norm is absurd and nonsensical, is progress. Ok, thats all I have to say about that.