Pinned Butterflies: The Self-Captivity of White People: Sharing Lessons I Have Learned As a White Man Living in Black & White America

In recent years there have been repeated calls for "the discussion" between Whites and Blacks in America. The author, a white man, a native son of Texas, has lived within "the discussion" for the entirety of his adult life. In 1967 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Loving's, in Loving vs. Virginia, thereby decriminalizing interracial marriage across the Land. The author began a love affair with a beautiful black coed in 1968, and they were married in Dallas in 1971, and until her passing in 1994 they had a beautiful life together. After losing her, the author realized in his heart and soul that the remainder of his life would be within the African American community, for he could not find peace of mind "returning" to the white world of his youth. Since then he went on to live with other black women, and became the godfather of six black children, who he helped raise to be productive adults today. However, the entirety of his working life, first in the USAF and then spanning a 50 year career as a professional engineer, was spent predominately in the white working world. This book tells his story, beginning with his boyhood and the social environment in which he was raised, and continues through the various parts of his working and social life. Along the way his circumstances gave him a window seat to witness the behavior of whites and blacks in various "race related" situations. Out of his life-long observations he has deduced that the hearts and minds of most Whites in America are impaled by their own history, pinned like dried butterflies to a board of "whiteness." White America suffers unconsciously from the moral injury to their own souls caused by the cruelties over hundreds of years inflicted by whites upon enslaved Africans and their progeny, African Americans. The vestiges of slavery, the post-Civil War times, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights era and on up to today, are manifested in the social ills that black Americans continue to suffer and endure. The author holds white America fully responsible for the failure of the United States to provide an even playing field for African Americans, whether the issue be income, health, housing, education, judicial and literally every other facet of America's social milieu. For 250 years Whites inflicted horrible atrocities on black people, and by doing so, dehumanized themselves, and over time that guilt became a cloud of silence and wishful memory loss about that history, passed on to their offspring generation to generation to the current state of "race in America." The author tells his own story in the context of our collective racial history, as he believes most Americans, especially younger generations, have been miseducated by our schools, and without knowing our true history, we continue to repeat it in many small and large ways. The author informs Whites what they must do to correct this situation, and offers guidance on how to begin that process within their own spirits. He closes the book with a "letter" to white Americans, taking his cue from Dr. Martin Luther KIng's Letter from Birmingham Jail. It is the author's sincere hope that readers will resonate with his argument for Whites to step up and do "the work" that is vitally needed to heal the schism between the races. Without this healing, the next 250 years and beyond for our future generations will indeed be destined to flatness and failure of what otherwise could be the fruition of the wonderful potential embedded in the promise of this Land.