An Interview with Mr. Fred Allen Sr.

      

An Interview with Fred Lee Allen Sr.

The subject that will be interviewed is Mr. Fred Lee Allen Sr. I chose to interview him because of his age and his life experiences being an African American man, who grew up during the late 1930’s in Tuscaloosa Alabama. Fred Allen, now at the great age of seventy-nine will share his childhood story with his me. He is one of most influential men that I know in my life. He is my Father. Fred is the second to the oldest of thirteen children.  In his culture not being educated was the norm.

  As a child working in the fields, it was the only work that was available for a young black man in those days, plus he was a member of a large poor family. Though there were many cultural influences and differences, he stayed true to what he believed. I asked my Dad just how far back could he remember about some things that happened to him growing up in the South. One of the first things he said was that, “Kids grew up faster in those days than they do today.”

 On the contrary, I would have thought differently because of way kids behave in this new age of technology. But no, he insisted that kids grew up faster because they had too. We can have no direct knowledge of any other culture other than our own. During that period of time Dad’s perception in his culture viewed the role of his peers as growing up before there time.  Tajfel  (1969) & Triandis (1964) says that, “Culture has a much greater effect on the perception process than on sensation itself.” 

Human perception is a three step process of selection, organization, and interpretation which all are affected by culture (Jandt, 2007). Being the second child to the oldest of thirteen, Dad primarily worked in the fields, rarely going to school. What I thought was quite different was that his Dad, Joe only allowed him to go to school when the weather was bad, and if weather was good he had to work in the fields. In society today it is quite different. Normally, when their inclement weather, kids stay home and allowed make up days, whereas in his sub-culture, it was the opposite. I’m sure this wasn’t the case for all children in the early 1940’s, but for my dad it was a way of life. Through definition, a subculture is part of the whole.  In the Deep South where dad grew up, school was not a high priority for any of the kids even his very own younger siblings didn’t attend school.   
                                                          

Their only means of travel besides walking was a horse and buggy that only his Father could use, while other members of society had long traveled by car.  Motor vehicles were in existence but not for some people. Highly influenced by listening to the radio my Dad could only dream of having those things. At the age of 12 years old he started walking to Church every Sunday with his Mom. That became a family ritual for him and his mother. His father didn’t make the other kids go just because grandma and Dad went, but my dad went faithfully. He said to me, “I have always wanted to know about the Lord.” I believe at some point Dad and Grandmother must have started some type of ritual, attending church together every Sunday as Mother and son.

Jandt (2010) describes rituals as a socially essential collective activity within a culture. He then shared with me his dream as a child of completing high school. I didn’t realize that my Dad dreamed of the day he could go to school full time and graduate. I asked him what did could remember about being part of a subgroup or ethnicity? Being of African decent, my Dad shared his feelings on the injustice and inequalities that African American’s in the South opposed during that time.

As the dominant culture during that time, subcultures within ethnic groups were subjected to the foundations of social norms within that society, (Jandt, 2010). My Dad said,  “I was teased and treated unfairly many times because I was Black,” People even in my own race made judgments about me based on how I looked or just for the darker color of my skin. They even called me “colored boy”, my Dad said. The term stereotype is the broader term commonly used to refer to negative or positive judgments made about individuals based on any believed membership of a group of people (Jandt, 2007). I believe that this affected how Dad generally communicated with people outside of his own race and his comfort zone.

In the text there is a quote by Gordon Allport, The nature of Prejudice (1954) that states, “The easiest idea to sell anyone is that he is better than someone else.” The term, “White Privilege” Jandt describes in the text from McIntosh, how a dominant culture empowers some: I believe that is intercultural communication became a disadvantage for subcultures through increased prejudice. Dad felt just that way. Being a part of a subculture group of people who were treated differently just because of the color of their skin and their beliefs in American culture in the early 1940’s.

 Oh, course history has shown that this dominance started long before the early 40’s. What my dad thought about these injustices that created the barriers in intercultural communication. He then said, “As a little boy when we did get the chance to go to school, we had to walk for miles and were not allowed to walk past the White school just down the road. We had to go on the other side of the road. He said, “The White kids would throw things and call us names.” In those days things were different than they are today in our society. We had to speak only when spoken too.   

                                                       

  The only comment we could make were Yes, Sir, or Yes, Mama.  That would be the just of the communication between the two races.  There were barriers in communicating with the dominant culture. In the South it was the norm to speak with the language of Southerners.  

 The lack of education for African Americans created more of a barrier in intercultural communication among the dominant culture.  I learned through my interview with my dad how school was not a high priority with his Dad, just working in the fields. I also learned that even when he got the chance to go to school the resources for educating Black kids were limited.      

                                                                              

 Interpersonal communication can be defined as unique, irreplaceable, interdependent, and intrinsically rewarding. (Adler, Rosenfeld & Proctor (2007).  He ran into several challenges learning how to develop interpersonal relationships with others. He did have support from people he never would have though would be supportive. The society was changing and there were major influences that changed his views about his culture and race relations.  One of the first of societies greatest impact in my Dad culture was the radio. Radio influenced his ideas about the whole around him. We wanted to learn and acquired the things that were advertised on the radio. He shared that music impacted him to learn about other subcultures.  


Typically, African American family’s norm during the start of the twentieth century lived and worked on a farm in the South, did not own their homes, and was unlikely to have there children in school (Maloney 2010). That was the cultural norm for African Americans during that time. “As a family we grew our own fruits and vegetables, raised our chickens and goats”, he said. We only went to the store for cornmeal to make bread. We could not go into a White establishment without a good reason, he said.  That was my dad’s only knowledge of how to effectively communicate with in his culture. Just do what you are told. They did things on there own within their culture and developed their way of communicating with each other. Sometimes emulating what someone else heard became his normal way of life. In one way being stereotyped because of the color of his skin and the way they other expected you to behave developed into yet another barrier between the races in this dominant culture.    

 Being in the church, he enjoyed the Negro spiritual hymns. Those words brought life to what he could not write or speak for himself. It was like a new language that he could understand and bring him even closer to his creator.   He stated, “listening to those hymns gave me comfort in time were I may have been discouraged.” Some of these values that my dad had growing up in such a difficult time are values that I hold with me today. We share the same belief, practice the same religion, participate in the same rituals and very are very of who I am as a result of watching my Dad build his life after growing up in the South.    

                                                                                                                    

When I asked him how he felt about his life today compared to the days past, he says, “I am grateful to have worked in the fields with my Dad, found refuge with my Mother that she allowed me to develop in my walk with God, and peace with who I am. Today, life is different. I didn’t much about the South and the communications that my dad experienced growing up. He moved to the North before I was born, working for his family, going to school to get his high school diploma, which is very proud of. In our society today things have changed while some things remain the same. For my Father, school was now a priority instead something he could only dream about.

Laws that protect the rights of all people have changed the course of this country.  For my Dad, education was the key to breaking some of those intercultural communication barriers. Dad has always desire to live right and do right and to be respectful of others.  I believe that we both know the value of learning about your past will have impact on your future. As African American and growing up in a different cultural time than my father has through education allowed him to communicate effectively with people within other cultures.

                                                             References


 Jandt, F.E. (2010). An introduction to intercultural communication: Identities in a global community (6^th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. (ISBN: 9781412970105)

Adler, R.B., Rosenfeld, L.B., & Proctor, R.F., (2007). Interplay. The process of interpersonal communication (10^th ed.) Oxford, NY: Oxford University

Lalwani, P. (2010). Ethnicity verses race. Retrieved from                                                            

   http: www.buzzle.com/articles/ethicity-vs-race.html

Maloney, T.N. (2010). African americans in the twentieth century. Retrieved from http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/maloney.african.american

Gataullina, L. (2008). Stereotypes in the media. Retrieved from http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/sports03/papers/lgatavllina.html