So thankful for this post which mirrors my experience as a partner in a 42 year racially mixed marriage. I marvel at the acceptance of mixed-race unions in our nation and, despite the efforts of the "Afropessimists", the strides that we have made in racial/ethnic equality in general. I pray that the truth of which Mr. Gussow speaks will one day silence those who seem to long for (end presently profit from) the racial division of the past.
From five years before Brown v. Board of Education in a mixed neighborhood, through a variety of encounters with others who don't look like me, I appreciate your perspective. You give me hope.
Adam, it's great to see that you're still mixing it up after all these years. I have fond memories of Satan and Adam jamming on Broadway in the late 80s / early 90s. You and Sherrie and Shaun are "Groovy People" indeed!
That photo captures it well. I never saw you two play a street fair, just jamming up around 112th Street, you with your Mouse and Mister Satan producing more sound than I ever thought humanly possible. As a guitarist myself, I found him awe-inspiring.
I was going to ask but I read all the way to the end, and evidently you are the same Adam Gussow who made the harmonica tutorials I used to watch on YouTube years ago. I enjoyed them a lot, as I did this article, but I never did get the hang of it. Many thanks.
Thank you for your thoughtfully-written piece. As the mother of a "marginally" biracial child (half Asian, half-Caucasian) in the Northeast, these are issues that I never thought about, and I read it with much interest. But what touched me the most as an aspiring musician was Shaun's musicality and his willingness to share it with the world.
Thanks very much. And, yes, "compensating" was about twice as expensive 45 years ago. Best of luck to him; it's a beautiful horn with a wonderful sound.
Great post but there is no such thing as “whiteness”. Caucasians do not look, act, feel or behave the same. That term is as offensive as a pejorative that has been widely banned.
I disagree with you, David. I used the word because, in that moment in Jim Crow Mississippi circa 1962, what the 100% white rioters were upholding was, in fact, an ideology of whiteness supreme, aka white supremacy. They were determined that "their' whites-only space not be violated and they viewed that violation--Meredith's presence--as a kind of sacrilege. Thus my phrase, "a riot of outraged whiteness": an angry white mob upholding their possessive investment in an abstraction. It's also true that the term is woefully overused these days. I don't invoke whitness except, as doctors say, when it's clearly indicated, as it is here, or when I'm plainly ironizing it to make clear how rickety it is in specific contemporary contexts. To that extent, I share your desire to repudiate it.
There is such a thing as people who believe themselves to be superior racially - I do not dispute that such a thing existed or exists.
What I object to is lumping any racial group into a pile and calling it the definition of the whole. It is a cringeworthy term and is often thrown around in conversations by people who are not Caucasian.
I am descended from a Mississippi State Senator (Great Grandfather) who served in the period after the end of Reconstruction and was, in fact, born on a family owned indigo plantation in South Carolina and served in the Confederate Army. He settled in Mississippi after the Civl War. But that is not me, and the values he represented and represents are not mine and never have been.
As a child born in the 1960s in the Midwest who moved to the South after integration in the shadow of the civil rights movement I would have hoped that our country would be much father down the path of getting along than we have. I feel that much of the "White Nationalism" is overblown because in the places I have lived in the South I do not see it as being common much less widespread.
America has always had crackpots and maybe an extra helping due to the American traditions of free speech. In my town - once a Sundown town under Jim Crow - the population is almost evenly split between white and black people and those numbers are increasingly adding more people from other demographic groups. The town is well integrated and I see no push to divide us as we are all neighbors.
if you truly take offense to racialization you best be telling those white supremacist people you don't like their imposition of racial categories because that is what started this mess and they are the people who continue to perpetuate it and perennially renew its relevance. Otherwise it seems to me you are barking up the wrong tree here directing your offense to concepts of "whiteness" at people already either struggling with or against it (regardless of their phenotypic features). We cannot move forward without accepting and working with the reality that many people identify as "black" and "white"-- either because society formally and informally imposes those categories, eg via institutions or norms, or because they choose it--for various and likely complex and contradictory reasons.
I would contend the people pushing racial categories are the DEI crowd. It pays very well to divide people- politically and financially. Ask the BLM folk who forgot the Marxism they espoused and went on a real estate binge and handed out crony contracts to family and friends.
I think most Americans are not happy with the woke lecturing them on how evil they are based solely upon the color of their skin. The whole woke thing is antithetical to the Jude-Christian heritage of the nation. Like it or not, much of what is good about America was informed by that heritage.
That Christian heritage (discussions of aspirational theology vs cultural reality aside, we are talking about culture) is also responsible for genocide and chattel slavery, too. IMO what Christianity has brought to the settler colonial game thus far is, at best, a wash. Have you looked at the horrors of Christian boarding schools? A huge portion of what is good about America is its diversity, despite a proven history of entrenched white supremacy, including a lot of whitewashing in historiography.
Who said judgment based on skin color? Whiteness is performative and part of that performance (white supremacy) looks down upon and fears others based on the color of their skin. That is the part that needs to go, the part that pathologizes difference. Different is not better or worse. For most of human history different cultures were linked with different phenotypical expressions adapted to their evolutionary context. It is only in very recent history of high mobility and heavy migration that phenotype has become more divorced from culture. America as a melting pot has synthesized that difference into greatness in spite of entrenched white supremacy. If people want to tie "supremacy" to phenotype that's on them and their culture deserves to be destroyed bc it's cancerous chauvinistic imperialism at its root.
What happens to skin color? Meh, who cares apart from white supremacists? But as Christians would say, "hate the sin, love the sinner." People are more than their ideology, dogma and fundamentalism.
Saying that people who support diversity are the ones "racializing" strikes me as ironic projection wrapped in a straw man. I have never heard of anyone pathologizing white people. Just white supremacist behaviors and beliefs, which unfortunately takes up a lot of space in the performance of whiteness and doesn't leave space for much else, perpetuating a vicious cycle of cultural insecurity. People who are fixated on others don't do much with their own lives.
Pathologizing DEI etc literally depends on a whitewashed and sanitized history of America that ignores the legacy and ongoing impact of entrenched (normalized and even institutionalized) white supremacy. The cultural heritage of this nation is indigenous first nations, first and foremost. The textbook backlash is another example, every time a more honest history is taught fragile white people start up their torches and pitchforks. What I see as a white person is a bunch of white people complaining bc they are being asked to make space for, consider and accommodate the needs of others who have always had to make space for, consider and accommodate their needs. I see men complain about the same wrt to gender issues bc they are being asked to consider others' needs, perspectives and experiences. I only see that among insecure people who feel unsure about their own identity and culture, which leads me to conclude that white/male supremacy is a violent projection of unacknowledged and unaddressed internal issues. Neither coddling nor being mean nor ignoring nor apologizing helps that dynamic of emotional fragility and entitlement. But it must be held to account if we respect people and want them to have growth opportunities for greater self-actualization and just and lasting peace free of violent projections. That same pathologization of diversity is why we have a global ecological crisis.
The rise of White Nationalism is symptomatic of the embrace of whiteness and it’s sense of superiority. You might not feel part of that tribe but it’s existence is very real.
Case in point: our neighbor's biracial kid was literally run out of a bar by violently drunken rowdy Proud Boys. They surrounded his car taunting, harassing amd threatening him. One of them climbed on his car and sustained a head injury. Then they took him to court, trying to play the victim. They lost, but not before
1. They doxxed him, stalked him and continuously threatened him and his wife and infant kid at their home, forcing them to move.
2. Tracked him to his work and blockaded the entrance, harrassing employees and customers and preventing him from working and commuting safely. The owner had to lay him off just to keep his business open.
3. Raised a surprising amount of money for their bullshit lawsuit, which in turn forced the familybto spend tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees proving it was bullshit.
Where were the police through all this? Here's another story...
A "black" business owner in a city about an hour south was getting continuously threatened, harassed and vandalized by white supremacists. He called the cops, several times. When they showed up, they detained and interrogated him, not the "white" people causing the problem. He didn't identify as "black" but called the cops as a business owner. However, the cops and white supremacists imposed that identity on him as part of performing their self-identified "whiteness."
The respective cities were Vancouver, WA and Salem, OR side of the Mason-Dixon line.
I do not dispute that there are crackpots who hold extreme and unreasonable views but think that the numbers are generally quite small. Social Media tends to amplify many voices on subjects serious and trivial as it is the nature of it.
The divides I see that concern me cross the lines of race and ethnicity. Social and economic mobility in the US seems to have become very difficult and the divides of education and wealth seem more profound than race, ethnicity or faith.
The most reliable predictors of upward mobility in 2024 are the zip code you grew up in and the socio-economic class of your parents. Not your intellect, ambition, effort, talent or experience. The social gates opened by your family and social connections often open opportunities others never even know exist.
Our media rarely addresses this as the people talking on TV at the network level are all in the top 1%. They are hardly going to turn the camera around and let us see the class and wealth privilege that they and their children enjoy.
One of the things the lawsuits over discrimination at Ivy League schools has uncovered is that the majority of kids enrolled as undergrads did not get there on some super high level of merit - legacies and affirmative action (under whatever name it hides today) make up the bulk of admissions. Only about a quarter at some Ivy League schools got there on exceptional academic merit.
Everything you say about entrenched social disadvantage is true. Where I disagree is in how widespread the crackpots are and how pernicious their influence. 74 million people voted for a proven racist, sexual abuser and con artist in 2020 and a similar number will do so this year. Unfortunately, Trump is not an isolated case on the world stage.
To be fair Trump is a narcissistic populist. He'll do and say whatever he thinks keeps him a powerful center of attention (positive or negative). We can psychoanalyze what (and wherher) he may believe at his core, but to the extent he uses and engages with concepts of race, it is because he sees it as a leverage point reflected in the public.
But yeah white supremacy (still) exists and still ironically enjoys a lot of popular and passive support and apologies from the mainstream "race repudiators"
Re: upward mobility, both zip code and socioeconomic class themselves retain strong ties to race, although it seems they are de-correlating slowly with time, which gives me some hope. But not without immense struggle. It was not long ago that the real estate industry was engaged in its illegal Red Lining to exploit (and intensify) racism for financial profit. That alone destroyed countless lives amd entire communities. Downtown PDX and I-205 were built by targeting, forcibly relocating and ultimately dismantling the communities built by the local "black" population through imminent domain, twice. Race isn't the only reason, for sure, but it is still a strong reason. Eg Ref Unhealthy Places: The Ecology of Risk
The dirty little secret of white northerners is that big cities in the north, particularly on the coasts, are and long have been far more segregated than the South.
I've heard this for years and suspect it may be true. What I do know, from having once stumbled across one of those websites that assesses public schools based on all sorts of indices, is that Oxford, Mississippi's public schools are 50% white, 40% black, and 10% everything else. (I think I was looking at the assessment for Oxford Intermediate School, 5th and 6th grade.) Peaceful and equitable. That's a rare thing--and it means that this college town in Mississippi was a particularly hospitable place for a son like ours to go through his school years.
So thankful for this post which mirrors my experience as a partner in a 42 year racially mixed marriage. I marvel at the acceptance of mixed-race unions in our nation and, despite the efforts of the "Afropessimists", the strides that we have made in racial/ethnic equality in general. I pray that the truth of which Mr. Gussow speaks will one day silence those who seem to long for (end presently profit from) the racial division of the past.
One more brilliant, uplifting story from a gifted writer. Thank you FBT and Adam Gussow.
Great post! I love stories about the New South and the way things are, not the way things were for our grandparents and great grandparents.
This was very good. I have been, FWIW, a blues fan since forever.
And this is an excellent Substack.
From five years before Brown v. Board of Education in a mixed neighborhood, through a variety of encounters with others who don't look like me, I appreciate your perspective. You give me hope.
Adam,
Thank you for sharing your story. You seem to have a great family and a very musical one! Good luck to your son at Ole Miss!
Adam, it's great to see that you're still mixing it up after all these years. I have fond memories of Satan and Adam jamming on Broadway in the late 80s / early 90s. You and Sherrie and Shaun are "Groovy People" indeed!
I remember those days well. We used to play the Mort & Ray street fairs. There are some wonderful photos by Jack Vartoogian bouncing around the web that show us doing that. Found 'em! https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/american-blues-duo-street-performers-satan-and-adam-perform-news-photo/1143161822?adppopup=true https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/american-blues-duo-street-performers-satan-and-adam-perform-news-photo/1143161825?adppopup=true
That photo captures it well. I never saw you two play a street fair, just jamming up around 112th Street, you with your Mouse and Mister Satan producing more sound than I ever thought humanly possible. As a guitarist myself, I found him awe-inspiring.
Thoughtful, ejoyable to read an upbeat piece in this mixed up world we live in.
Gary J. (Canada) The BluesWeb guy from 30+ years ago.
I was going to ask but I read all the way to the end, and evidently you are the same Adam Gussow who made the harmonica tutorials I used to watch on YouTube years ago. I enjoyed them a lot, as I did this article, but I never did get the hang of it. Many thanks.
Thank you for your thoughtfully-written piece. As the mother of a "marginally" biracial child (half Asian, half-Caucasian) in the Northeast, these are issues that I never thought about, and I read it with much interest. But what touched me the most as an aspiring musician was Shaun's musicality and his willingness to share it with the world.
“The Times They Are A Changin” for some not quickly enough, but the direction seems right
Curious what make and model of euphonium your son, Shaun, plays. I've had a Besson 4-valve compensating horn for ~45 years now.
He's got an Andreas Eastman compensating. "Compensating," I discovered, means "twice as expensive."
Thanks very much. And, yes, "compensating" was about twice as expensive 45 years ago. Best of luck to him; it's a beautiful horn with a wonderful sound.
Great post but there is no such thing as “whiteness”. Caucasians do not look, act, feel or behave the same. That term is as offensive as a pejorative that has been widely banned.
I disagree with you, David. I used the word because, in that moment in Jim Crow Mississippi circa 1962, what the 100% white rioters were upholding was, in fact, an ideology of whiteness supreme, aka white supremacy. They were determined that "their' whites-only space not be violated and they viewed that violation--Meredith's presence--as a kind of sacrilege. Thus my phrase, "a riot of outraged whiteness": an angry white mob upholding their possessive investment in an abstraction. It's also true that the term is woefully overused these days. I don't invoke whitness except, as doctors say, when it's clearly indicated, as it is here, or when I'm plainly ironizing it to make clear how rickety it is in specific contemporary contexts. To that extent, I share your desire to repudiate it.
There is such a thing as people who believe themselves to be superior racially - I do not dispute that such a thing existed or exists.
What I object to is lumping any racial group into a pile and calling it the definition of the whole. It is a cringeworthy term and is often thrown around in conversations by people who are not Caucasian.
I am descended from a Mississippi State Senator (Great Grandfather) who served in the period after the end of Reconstruction and was, in fact, born on a family owned indigo plantation in South Carolina and served in the Confederate Army. He settled in Mississippi after the Civl War. But that is not me, and the values he represented and represents are not mine and never have been.
As a child born in the 1960s in the Midwest who moved to the South after integration in the shadow of the civil rights movement I would have hoped that our country would be much father down the path of getting along than we have. I feel that much of the "White Nationalism" is overblown because in the places I have lived in the South I do not see it as being common much less widespread.
America has always had crackpots and maybe an extra helping due to the American traditions of free speech. In my town - once a Sundown town under Jim Crow - the population is almost evenly split between white and black people and those numbers are increasingly adding more people from other demographic groups. The town is well integrated and I see no push to divide us as we are all neighbors.
if you truly take offense to racialization you best be telling those white supremacist people you don't like their imposition of racial categories because that is what started this mess and they are the people who continue to perpetuate it and perennially renew its relevance. Otherwise it seems to me you are barking up the wrong tree here directing your offense to concepts of "whiteness" at people already either struggling with or against it (regardless of their phenotypic features). We cannot move forward without accepting and working with the reality that many people identify as "black" and "white"-- either because society formally and informally imposes those categories, eg via institutions or norms, or because they choose it--for various and likely complex and contradictory reasons.
I would contend the people pushing racial categories are the DEI crowd. It pays very well to divide people- politically and financially. Ask the BLM folk who forgot the Marxism they espoused and went on a real estate binge and handed out crony contracts to family and friends.
I think most Americans are not happy with the woke lecturing them on how evil they are based solely upon the color of their skin. The whole woke thing is antithetical to the Jude-Christian heritage of the nation. Like it or not, much of what is good about America was informed by that heritage.
That Christian heritage (discussions of aspirational theology vs cultural reality aside, we are talking about culture) is also responsible for genocide and chattel slavery, too. IMO what Christianity has brought to the settler colonial game thus far is, at best, a wash. Have you looked at the horrors of Christian boarding schools? A huge portion of what is good about America is its diversity, despite a proven history of entrenched white supremacy, including a lot of whitewashing in historiography.
Who said judgment based on skin color? Whiteness is performative and part of that performance (white supremacy) looks down upon and fears others based on the color of their skin. That is the part that needs to go, the part that pathologizes difference. Different is not better or worse. For most of human history different cultures were linked with different phenotypical expressions adapted to their evolutionary context. It is only in very recent history of high mobility and heavy migration that phenotype has become more divorced from culture. America as a melting pot has synthesized that difference into greatness in spite of entrenched white supremacy. If people want to tie "supremacy" to phenotype that's on them and their culture deserves to be destroyed bc it's cancerous chauvinistic imperialism at its root.
What happens to skin color? Meh, who cares apart from white supremacists? But as Christians would say, "hate the sin, love the sinner." People are more than their ideology, dogma and fundamentalism.
Saying that people who support diversity are the ones "racializing" strikes me as ironic projection wrapped in a straw man. I have never heard of anyone pathologizing white people. Just white supremacist behaviors and beliefs, which unfortunately takes up a lot of space in the performance of whiteness and doesn't leave space for much else, perpetuating a vicious cycle of cultural insecurity. People who are fixated on others don't do much with their own lives.
Pathologizing DEI etc literally depends on a whitewashed and sanitized history of America that ignores the legacy and ongoing impact of entrenched (normalized and even institutionalized) white supremacy. The cultural heritage of this nation is indigenous first nations, first and foremost. The textbook backlash is another example, every time a more honest history is taught fragile white people start up their torches and pitchforks. What I see as a white person is a bunch of white people complaining bc they are being asked to make space for, consider and accommodate the needs of others who have always had to make space for, consider and accommodate their needs. I see men complain about the same wrt to gender issues bc they are being asked to consider others' needs, perspectives and experiences. I only see that among insecure people who feel unsure about their own identity and culture, which leads me to conclude that white/male supremacy is a violent projection of unacknowledged and unaddressed internal issues. Neither coddling nor being mean nor ignoring nor apologizing helps that dynamic of emotional fragility and entitlement. But it must be held to account if we respect people and want them to have growth opportunities for greater self-actualization and just and lasting peace free of violent projections. That same pathologization of diversity is why we have a global ecological crisis.
[removed, delete function not working]
The rise of White Nationalism is symptomatic of the embrace of whiteness and it’s sense of superiority. You might not feel part of that tribe but it’s existence is very real.
Case in point: our neighbor's biracial kid was literally run out of a bar by violently drunken rowdy Proud Boys. They surrounded his car taunting, harassing amd threatening him. One of them climbed on his car and sustained a head injury. Then they took him to court, trying to play the victim. They lost, but not before
1. They doxxed him, stalked him and continuously threatened him and his wife and infant kid at their home, forcing them to move.
2. Tracked him to his work and blockaded the entrance, harrassing employees and customers and preventing him from working and commuting safely. The owner had to lay him off just to keep his business open.
3. Raised a surprising amount of money for their bullshit lawsuit, which in turn forced the familybto spend tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees proving it was bullshit.
Where were the police through all this? Here's another story...
A "black" business owner in a city about an hour south was getting continuously threatened, harassed and vandalized by white supremacists. He called the cops, several times. When they showed up, they detained and interrogated him, not the "white" people causing the problem. He didn't identify as "black" but called the cops as a business owner. However, the cops and white supremacists imposed that identity on him as part of performing their self-identified "whiteness."
The respective cities were Vancouver, WA and Salem, OR side of the Mason-Dixon line.
I do not dispute that there are crackpots who hold extreme and unreasonable views but think that the numbers are generally quite small. Social Media tends to amplify many voices on subjects serious and trivial as it is the nature of it.
The divides I see that concern me cross the lines of race and ethnicity. Social and economic mobility in the US seems to have become very difficult and the divides of education and wealth seem more profound than race, ethnicity or faith.
The most reliable predictors of upward mobility in 2024 are the zip code you grew up in and the socio-economic class of your parents. Not your intellect, ambition, effort, talent or experience. The social gates opened by your family and social connections often open opportunities others never even know exist.
Our media rarely addresses this as the people talking on TV at the network level are all in the top 1%. They are hardly going to turn the camera around and let us see the class and wealth privilege that they and their children enjoy.
One of the things the lawsuits over discrimination at Ivy League schools has uncovered is that the majority of kids enrolled as undergrads did not get there on some super high level of merit - legacies and affirmative action (under whatever name it hides today) make up the bulk of admissions. Only about a quarter at some Ivy League schools got there on exceptional academic merit.
Everything you say about entrenched social disadvantage is true. Where I disagree is in how widespread the crackpots are and how pernicious their influence. 74 million people voted for a proven racist, sexual abuser and con artist in 2020 and a similar number will do so this year. Unfortunately, Trump is not an isolated case on the world stage.
To be fair Trump is a narcissistic populist. He'll do and say whatever he thinks keeps him a powerful center of attention (positive or negative). We can psychoanalyze what (and wherher) he may believe at his core, but to the extent he uses and engages with concepts of race, it is because he sees it as a leverage point reflected in the public.
But yeah white supremacy (still) exists and still ironically enjoys a lot of popular and passive support and apologies from the mainstream "race repudiators"
Re: upward mobility, both zip code and socioeconomic class themselves retain strong ties to race, although it seems they are de-correlating slowly with time, which gives me some hope. But not without immense struggle. It was not long ago that the real estate industry was engaged in its illegal Red Lining to exploit (and intensify) racism for financial profit. That alone destroyed countless lives amd entire communities. Downtown PDX and I-205 were built by targeting, forcibly relocating and ultimately dismantling the communities built by the local "black" population through imminent domain, twice. Race isn't the only reason, for sure, but it is still a strong reason. Eg Ref Unhealthy Places: The Ecology of Risk
The dirty little secret of white northerners is that big cities in the north, particularly on the coasts, are and long have been far more segregated than the South.
I've heard this for years and suspect it may be true. What I do know, from having once stumbled across one of those websites that assesses public schools based on all sorts of indices, is that Oxford, Mississippi's public schools are 50% white, 40% black, and 10% everything else. (I think I was looking at the assessment for Oxford Intermediate School, 5th and 6th grade.) Peaceful and equitable. That's a rare thing--and it means that this college town in Mississippi was a particularly hospitable place for a son like ours to go through his school years.
Thoughtful, informative and laced with humour as usual Mr G. Thank you.
Well said, dear sir. Thanks for your continued contribution to a better place and for making me a better person.