Allison Montague: “Shelby, you are Black.”
Shelby Cohen: “I’m not Black. You’re Tan. Daddy is Jewish.”
Allison Montague: “Shelby, listen to me. In our family, we can be who we are. When we’re outside, you’re Black. Blackness is your Super Power.” — The Racial Facts of Life Talk, U.S. Senate Candidate Allison Montague and her five-year-old daughter Shelby Cohen, October 2044, Darien Connecticut. The Self-Identity of Allison Montague
=========
I am looking at the television right now. There is a beautiful woman talking and I cannot tell her identity. She is ambiguous, a native of Louisiana. Her skin color is almond, her hair is straight, her eyes are vaguely Asian, her eyes are brown. Her voice does not betray her self-identity. I am at a loss to identify this woman and I absolutely love my mind’s inability to pigeon hole this woman.
Call me a dreamer but I suspect many of our racial problems would go away if more people were ambiguous to the naked eye. Just saying.
Let me tell you something — you cannot tell whether someone is a descendant of American slavery by a look see. Can’t be done. There are way too many Haitians, Jamaicans, Igbos, Cubans and Puerto Ricans (not to mention mixed-race beautiful people) running around town. This nascent idea of street race is for the birds but don’t get me started.
This morning, I don’t have a burning thesis, no hard edged argument to make. I have been in observation mode this week. It astounds me that a Blackness is Oppression Northing Else Matters world can distort reality so that we erase nuance and complexity from the past, that we can count on our race alone as a force field. Who wouldn’t want to be Black or associated with Blackness in a post Blackness is Oppression Nothing Else Matters world?
So, the idea of a candidate for the U.S. Senate in the year 2044 came to me. Allison Montague came of age in the late 2010s. She learned Blackness is a Super Power. And now she is teaching her five-year-old daughter to erase her Jewishness in public. Accentuate the Black. Shelby trusts her Mommy. Mommy knows best and so Shelby will grow up with a flattened identity of her racial self.
=========
A great philosopher once said we should be unburdened by what has been. I agree with this sentiment. When we allow our racial past to define our racial present and our racial future, we become lost as countrymen. One reads about Allison having the talk with her innocent daughter and one feels sadness. The cycle of warped self-identity is passed to another generation like a baton in a relay race.
One example of distorted reality from the past would be sundown towns. While traveling through Chesterfield County, Virginia, a family member asked about sundown towns. These dragons from the southern night are clearly something the family member learned in prep school or the Ivy League. I have never, ever mentioned sundown towns while raising my children since sundown towns were immaterial to my life and my goals in life.
What are sundown towns? Sundown towns are allegedly places where black people were unwelcomed after sunset. The refrain was one had best not find oneself in a sundown town after darkness, lest one risk assault, battery or worse. We are always going back to the 1950s when it comes to race consciousness of Blackness. These places are now gone, dragons slain by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Voting Rights Act.
And yet somehow Black consciousness continues to be informed by the specter of sundown towns. The Free Press performed an excellent public service recently when it published a chart of (modern - ?) sundown towns in the U.S. Sundown Towns and Dragons in the Southern Night I am going to place the image below so that you can see the fear and anxiety, a depiction designed to trigger ancestral traumas of the racial night.
Each red dot represents an alleged sundown town where there is evidence of intimidation or violence against black people. Lord, who would ever step foot in Illinois and Indiana??? As you have guessed by now, this chart is a gross falsehood of modern life today. There are no sundown towns anymore in America. This chart is dishonesty.
I define dishonesty as “misrepresentation, distractions, irrelevant points, misleading information, guilt by association, ad hominem attacks.” I understand the aim as infusing black American consciousness with fear, fear and more fear.
Here is the reality — I have known many of these places and gave no thought to darkness and my racial safety. The chart lists La Jolla, California…just a moment. I need a stiff drink.
(pause)
A nice shot of Scottish Whiskey to honor my Scottish DNA/smile. (Where was I?)
Other than home and Coronado, my family has spent more hours in La Jolla than any…other…neighborhood in San Diego County since 1996. La Jolla is like a second home. My second lunch in San Diego was at a Mexican restaurant across from the Pacific Ocean. My children were all born in La Jolla. We have spent countless nights in La Jolla enjoying anniversaries, birthdays, sleep overs, bon fires, shopping, school nights and all the rest. I know La Jolla. La Jolla is part of our life. La Jolla is not a sundown town. It is libelous for La Jolla to be on this chart. I am asking Tougaloo College to remove La Jolla from this chart immediately.
Otherwise, the chart is a racial lie.
Escondido, California is on the chart. My Lord, help me! I know Escondido. My family knows Escondido. Since the kids were little, we have vacationed at the Lawrence Welk Resort. It is ironic that my wife and mom-in-law were vacationing in Escondido last week. There is no racial threat of intimidation and violence after sundown in Escondido. I should tell the family member that this zany chart lists our beloved Escondido as a sundown town but I am a bigger man. I do not want to taint my family member’s precious childhood vacation memories of a great place, Escondido.
The chart lies again. Please remove Escondido from this libelous image.
Napa Valley, California is on the chart!!! I nearly fell out of my chair. I wish I could do handstands ladies and gentlemen. There is nothing real about this imagined chart of sundown towns whatsoever. Consider my recent experience in Napa Valley. Who Are My People? Our Great Grandparents Never Knew These Times My older son spent the last week in Napa Valley, had a ball, no sundown town experience…at…all. What do we do when institutions like Tougaloo College distribute falsehoods, disinformation and misinformation? I am open to suggestions.
Boulder City, Nevada is on the list. When I lived in Las Vegas, I was curious about the neighborhoods and towns outside of Las Vegas. We traveled one sunny weekend to explore. We toured the Hoover Dam and drove through Boulder City. Just another town in the Nevada desert. Unremarkable to us with the two boys in the back seat. I got zero vibes of a sundown town. What angers me about this sundown town chart is how it can plant the suggestion in one’s mind that one should be afraid. It is the suggestion of fear which is diabolical.
Shame on you, Tougalooo College. For shame.
The chart poses the question — has Chincoteague, Virginia been a sundown town? Well, I have personal experience with the Eastern Shore of Virginia. My wife and I used to vacation at a Bed and Breakfast in Cape Charles. On one occasion, I wanted to go exploring. Without a racial care in the world. we traveled up the peninsula and sought out Tangiers Island. They still speak Old English on Tangiers Island. Chincoteague was in the vicinity. No one had placed the suggestion in my head that I should be afraid of small towns, so I had no consciousness of fear of the southern night.
What Tougaloo College has done is contribute to fear in black American consciousness. A sinister consequence.
I must laugh again and again with this sundown town chart. Did you know that Falls Church, Virginia is on the chart? I used to live in Alexandria and would travel through Falls Church on occasion for shopping at the mall. No sense of race at all. At all and this was back in the 1990s. What makes Falls Church laughable is none other than U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall lived in Falls Church with his wife and children. Would the first black Supreme Court Justice live in a sundown town?
I know it is hard to put on one’s thinking cap in the age of Tik Tok and X but try one must.
Of the hundreds of “Towns of Special Interest,” allow me to make the strongest case for the chart based on my personal knowledge. I draw your attention to Colonial Heights, Virginia. I know Colonia Heights. I grew up 13 miles from Colonia Heights. It was an 18-minute drive from my boyhood home.
Let’s talk about Colonial Heights.
When I was growing up, Colonial Heights was referred to as “Colonial Whites.” It was a city formed out of a desire of white residents to leave Chesterfield County, Virginia which was probably 20% black in the 1948 to 1960 time frame. Colonial Heights from inception was an all-white city with all that entailed in the 1948 to 1960 time frame. Oddly enough, the all-white city of Colonial Heights sat across the railroad tracks from the 80% black town of Ettrick in Chesterfield and across the Appomattox River from the 65% black city of Petersburg, the blackest city in the state of Virginia.
This triangulation gave rise to interesting racial dynamics. There developed a sense that speed traps existed within the Colonia Heights city limits. One had better stay within the speed limit of 35 miles an hour or one would receive a ticket. Black college students at the black Virginia State College in Ettrick had to travel down Jefferson Davis Highway through Colonial Heights to get to the college. There was ample space for prejudice and bigoty to play itself out. I was aware of this norm that one needed to watch oneself while driving through Colonia Heights. This was back in the 1970s, mind you.
The Colonial Heights public schools were all white. This intrigued me greatly as a high school student. I wanted to know what was I missing/smile. So, I organized a visitation program between Thomas Dale High School (my 8.5% black school) and Colonial Heights High School. I felt a Ruby Bridges moment as I parked my car in the parking lot and met my student hosts on my visit. To be fair, there was one black student who had attended the high school before me but she was harassed, bullied and eventually dropped out. No one bullied me or harassed me. I suspect they were on their best behavior as I was the Student Council President of a rival school and it was 1978.
I thought to myself these kids were handicapped. The world was not 100% white. How would they survive at college or in life? Heck, how they would make it across the railroad tracks at the black college or across the river in Virginia’s blackest city? I concluded their parents had handicapped them.
Fast forward to the year 2010 or so.
My sister reached out to me for help on some rental matter. I asked where did she live. She said, Colonial Heights! Colonial Heights. The world had changed. This was the first tell for me.
When we were in Virginia last month, my adult children had none of these memories of Colonial Heights. It was just another city in Dad’s world. I marveled that they drove through Colonial Heights with no consciousness of race which is as it should be. My older son sought out fast food from a shopping mall in Colonial Heights. No racial self-awareness. I saw blacks working in Colonial Heights. My 63-year-old eyes took it all in, and it was good.
Colonial Heights is now 15% black. Presumably, Colonial Heights High School is around 15% black as well. If Colonial Heights ever was a sundown town, it is no longer in the modern age.
=========
Conclusion: The power of suggestion is strong. When Tougaloo College suggests to vulnerable young minds that America is aflame with sundown towns in the year 2024, we must recognize the lie for what it is. Those who command attention have a fidelity to logic, to reality, to truth. Otherwise, we are just masters of manipulation.
Postscript — Press Conference, Windsor, Connecticut at the Chafee Loomis School auditorium. “I am a Black American Woman. My blood runs deep in this country. I am a descendant of poor struggling enslaved people from South Carolina in the 1790s. My people lived in slavery. How dare anyone question a Black Woman about her Black identity! It is beyond despicable that anyone would question my Black Identity. Next question please?” — U.S. Senate Candidate Allison Montague, late October 2044
These days, I admit, I just stumble through writings and while I am sometimes seeking out an author, I am more than likely surfing words and ideas without that consciousness. And so it is this morning.
And here I sit writing a note when I should be developing a post, discovering that it is your post Winkfield, Blackness is Your Super Power, that I have stumbled into reading. Thanks, once again.
Post in progress.