Racism

The Internationalist
March 2012

When Henry Hearns moved to Lancaster in the 1960s, the city's reputation for racism compelled him to go door to door, warning neighbors that he was black.

"I wanted them to know I love my wife, I love my children and I don't want any problem," he said.

But the prejudice he anticipated faded as the years passed, he said. Hearns, a pastor, was even, for a time, the city's only black mayor.

His experience points to a little-known distinction of this high desert city: Lancaster, population 157,000, leads Los Angeles County in black-white integration.

Just this week President Obama took a small step towards acknowledging an issue he has stayed away from for the most part, thus far in his presidency – that issue being race and racism. He did this by adding a specific painting, which in many ways opened a tiny window into a very big moment from our history, to the walls of White House. The painting is a Norman Rockwell and entitled “The Problem We All Live With” and is still apropos as the very circumstances surrounding the picture's coming to the county's attention this week speaks more to its significance than anything else.