THE WONDER OF FRIENDS: Friendships and Restoring Broken Relationships

Today we explore friendship, its dimensions, its value, its wonders. All three of us cherish one another’s friendship immensely and share enriching and enlightening friendships with numerous others. We begin with Henry’s remembrances of lifetime friendships.

Henry -- How marvelous are friends

Often, in the rat race of life, we forget friendships that extend to our early years and how they make life so much more than mere existence. As a kid, I promised myself I would remember a special time I wrote about much later:

We didn’t know

We would remember

We didn’t know

How special it was

We didn’t know

It was the best time ever

Not knowing the simplicity

Of thoughts forever

Not understanding the complexity

Of memories forever

Three kids sat on an old shed roof

Breathing the freshest air ever

Carrying a future that we never ---

Never caring of forever

I remembered this description in June 2017 as my train pulled slowly out of Washington’s Union Station, headed for New Haven, Connecticut with my 1963 Yale freshman roommate. Neither of us could contain our excitement about our 50^th year class reunion.

 

“Jones,” Mike asked, “what are the odds of two people meeting 50 plus years ago at the beginning of college, remaining friends, and traveling together like this now?”

“Not great,” I replied, leaning forward in my seat and looking over at him. “I’m not sure how we got here.”

His eyes widened and he spread his arms. “Even our wives have become close. And remember, there’s Norman and George and their wives.”

“It’s amazing,” I said. “And wonderful.”

George and Mike roomed together later. We all remained friends, convening from time to time for momentous occasions in our own lives and in the life of the world, as when we shared Barak Obama’s inauguration.

As my career – college at Yale, political work in Little Rock, law school at Michigan, clerkships in Little Rock and Duluth, practice and the bench in Little Rock – unfolded, Mike remained a constant presence. Neither his service in the Navy nor his work in New York and Washington broke the bond we formed beginning in 1963.

We also came to know each other through family. I stayed in touch with Mike through his dad. When I called to locate him, his father gave me his new number, saying, “You need to call that boy.” He understood our friendship and recognized the need we had to stay in touch. He knew we’d be there for each other.

Mike was with me the only time in my life I was ever intoxicated, as I reacted badly to the breakup with my fiancée. Years later, he was with me and my sister-in-law as my wife underwent surgery in Little Rock while I struggled to find a flight home.

Then there are friends from elementary and high school who’ve helped me remain connected with my formative years. We made special journeys together to celebrate one another’s achievements -- like the trips to change-of-command ceremonies for a classmate as he took charge of two naval vessels. Another special friend from high school informs us of the accomplishments and needs of our classmates, providing a link that keeps us greater than the sum of our parts.

The train ride helped me appreciate how continuing, caring relationships – friendships – can buoy and invigorate us as we deal with life. They represent real power. In fact, they keep things real.

Rob – Friends for all seasons    

I divide my life into eras – childhood, broadcasting, politics, law practice – as a way of reminding myself of what this journey has been like. In each part, there’ve been friends who defined the era and made it meaningful. Thinking of those friends makes me acknowledge I did very little alone. I should always give thanks for those who’ve been part of this trip.

 

I haven’t stayed in touch with all of them. Few people do that as well as Henry, and my circumstances differed. I grew up in many places, not one, as he did. Attending commuter colleges made developing friendships harder during that time. Still, in everything I’ve done, friends made the trip easier.

I’ve learned it’s never too late to form meaningful friendships. Some of my greatest pleasure now derives from time I spend playing golf with four sixty-and seventy-somethings I’ve bonded with in the last five years. Henry is right. Friendships buoy and invigorate us. They not only keep things real, they are real.

Woodson – Perhaps I can go home

I’ve devoted much of my adult life to making a living and less to making a life. I spent my time practicing law, engaging in politics, and otherwise advancing my career. I didn’t remain connected with important friends from childhood. But, I’ve now learned a different way.

During the most difficult time of my professional life, facing loss of a career and financial security, John, a childhood friend, offered, “You can always come home.”  Tyrone, another childhood friend, invited me to the Conway County NAACP’s Frank W. Smith Freedom Fund Banquet as guest speaker. There, grade school and high school friends – a basketball teammate, two puppy loves -- enveloped me.

John’s willingness to reach out during that difficult time, Tyrone’s invitation to speak at the banquet, and the reception I received told me one can “come home.” Like too many things in life, with friends there’s usually no do-over.  Friends, though, can make it feel so. I have friendships from college, law school, and my professional years I want to reinvigorate. I’m going to work on it, one at a time.  

 

LOVE IN BLACK AND WHITE: INTERRACIAL ROMANCE 2018

White Men/Black Women; Black Men/White Women -- What’s the World Coming To? 

Does anybody still care if blacks and whites become lovers or spouses?  Fifty-one years after the Supreme Court voided laws against interracial marriage, are interracial romances even a curiosity?  We explore the questions through three sets of eyes.

Rob Writes

“His color means little,” she said. “It’s how considerate he is, his thoughtfulness, the way he makes love to me, that matters.” A white woman friend gave me that response recently when I asked her about her relationship with a black man. She and her partner aren’t married, but they’ve lived together five years and behave toward each other and the world as a married couple.  

One in six new marriages in America involve people from different races. Between 1980 and 2017, the percentage of blacks marrying someone from a different race rose from five to 18 percent. Opposition among whites to a family member marrying someone black dropped from 31 percent in 2000 to ten percent today. Television commercials for car insurance, food, banks, and other products and services now feature black/white couples.

My friend and her partner, therefore, reflect a trend, but their union doesn’t win uniform acceptance. “Two couples stared at us recently,” she told me, “like we were exotic creatures at the zoo. One couple was white, the other black, past middle age. Maybe that’s the dividing line. I can’t say we’ve gotten that response from younger people.”  Pew research, for example, shows people over 50 are twice as likely to see interracial marriage as a “bad thing” as people under 30.  

Scholarly research and polling reveal much about interracial coupling in America:

•  People living in cities intermarry more than those residing in rural areas. 

•  Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to see interracial marriage as a “bad thing.”
•  Qualitative studies show many white Americans still regard dating and marrying someone black as “strange” or “weird.”

•  In one 2017 survey, 20 percent of black respondents said mixed marriages are “bad for society.” 

• Twice as many black men marry white women as black women marry white men. 

• Divorce rates for interracial marriages are about ten percent higher than for same race couples, but up to 44% lower for black woman/white man couples.

One virtually unexplored frontier remains: POLITICS.  The nation has minimal experience with interracial relationships among the political elite. Only a few high ranking elected officials are involved in mixed marriages – New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio and his black wife, Chirlane McCray, and Utah Congresswoman Mia Love and her white husband, Jason Love, come to mind. Michigan Republican senatorial nominee John James’s wife, Elizabeth, is white. 

                           

 

This may change. California Senator Kamala Harris, a black woman whose husband, Douglas Emhoff, is white, looks like she’s running for President.  If she runs and makes head way, presumably some people will take note of her interracial marriage. Senator Harris, therefore, could challenge the conclusion Janet Langhart, a black woman, reached when she became involved with then Maine Senator William Cohen. Langhart told Cohen she wouldn’t marry him while he remained in elective office because she feared voters would punish him. Langhart and Cohen married, but only after Cohen announced his departure from the Senate. He served as Defense Secretary during Bill Clinton’s second term.

I find the research and the attitudes reported interesting, but relationships are really about love and dedication to another person.  As someone involved in an interracial relationship, I’d like to know what difference it makes to anyone with whom I share my affections. But, then, I don’t understand many things about the world. 

Woodson Chimes In

“Miss Walker! Miss Walker! Miss Walker!  There’s a white woman outside!” my first grade classmate (and cousin)

shouted upon seeing a white woman approach our school in Holly Springs, Arkansas in 1956.  Though the teacher, my mother, responded, “She’s just a woman,” Jerry, like me, believed whites were different from “coloreds” (the way of referring to African-Americans then) and they shouldn’t mix. That’s just the way it was.

By my 1967 enrollment at historically black Arkansas AM&N College, things had changed. We “coloreds” started calling ourselves “black” and demanded treatment equal to whites. That included the right to marry interracially.  Along with my more militant brothers and sisters, I felt we’d been oppressed by whites and, therefore, couldn’t marry one.  My radicalization committed me to “Black Nationalism,” Pan Africanism” and other racial group formulations evidencing solidarity with people of color worldwide.  I viewed marrying a white person as betraying the movement. 

                                            

                           

My later reintroduction to the Christian religion of my birth caused me to reexamine that principle. Christianity told me “there is neither Jew nor Greek, black nor white; old thing

Labels

s are passed away; all things are made new.” Martin Luther King, Jr. admonished me to judge men and women by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Other religions – Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, the great religions of Africa -- each taught the oneness of all humanity.  My five years of law school and law practice in multi-ethnic Minnesota helped convince me I should cling less to tribal beliefs and recognize that of the 2.7 billion inhabitants of this planet, the choice of who one loves is nobody’s business but their own.

Henry Says

If romantic relationships uniquely define our lives, logic

suggests our quest for them is personal and third parties should have little say in individual choices. Prejudice, political considerations, social balancing, and ignorance may interfere with one’s romantic choices, but that just reveals how far humans must travel in route to existence on a higher plane where respect and understanding abound.  Until we get there, we live lives filled with small and petty concerns.