I vividly remember walking home from elementary school in my small northern Indiana town with a couple of pals at about the age of seven and beginning to learn what being “different” meant. They were talking about going to Sunday school and I attempted to chime in saying that I went to Sunday school too. The little boy in the group said, “No you don’t. You killed Christ.” My response was, “No I didn’t. I didn’t kill anybody.”
I ran home crying not understanding what had just taken place. But my parents did.
Children are not born learning to hate. Or to know racial or religious prejudice. My little school pal was so young, but he had learned to be prejudiced and anti-Semitic at a very young age from his family. I am Jewish. He was Catholic. In his mind, I wasn’t the same as him. Even though we were both white kids and I didn’t see any difference.
A year or two later my best friend and I were playing on a neighbor’s swing set. Linda was smart and nice and we just had fun together. Things sadly changed that day on the swings when a neighbor shouted out her window to “get that nigger out of here.” I really didn’t understand fully what had happened except this time Linda did. She quietly left and said she had to go home. This was the early fifties but these images remain sharp in my mind.
By the time I became a teenager, I learned about “restricted neighborhoods”, meaning those where Jewish people weren’t allowed to buy homes. Country clubs that were segregated according to religion. And all out prejudice toward me because of my religion. The theme has carried on though too much of my life. I had incredible parents who told me if I didn't like something, work to change it in a positive way. They taught by example. My Mother started the first integrated PTA at my elementary school.
After Senate Robert Kennedy was killed in 1968, like many who worked in his campaign, I was bereft. I decided not to go back to being a television news reporter, the job I had held prior to the campaign, and find work that would help carry on a small part of Senator Kennedy’s work fighting for civil rights and social justice. I took a job in Chicago as a social research analyst working in a special Model Cities program administered by the Richard J. Daley administration. It was called the Joint Youth Development Committee, and I worked with the Black street gangs in housing projects to help fight juvenile delinquency while trying to decentralize the institutions that dealt with them. It was an attempt to keep Black kids out of jail. I was the white kid sitting in a store front office getting a front row seat at how government bureaucracy slowed getting anything positive accomplished in the last sixties.
Over fifty years have passed and we have gone backward in our fight for equal rights and justice. Race relations in our country are at their lowest point since that time. Just as we thought progress was being made when we elected our country’s first black president, Barack Obama, our country went off the edge when his time in office ended. The next president we elected was a racist and bigoted man named Donald Trump who made it acceptable for too many like-minded people to come out of the dirt.
The racial events of this past year, including Asian hate crimes, renewed attempts at voter suppression laws and the horrific shootings and deaths of Black men by police officers are not new to this year. They’re simply being exposed for what they are.
During this time, we have heard more about “the talk” Black parents feel they must have with their children that explains things they can do to try and keep themselves safe if they are stopped by police officers. It’s not just schoolyard bullies.
The impact of the publicized shootings, assaults and the Derek Chauvin trial has had a trickle-down effect in the Black community that is hard for too many white people to comprehend. But here’s an example that took place today of a conversation I had with a business associate. A black mother with two sons about to go to college. We had been talking about their college choices and where they wanted to go. She said her eldest was firm in his desire to go to an HBCU (Historically Black College and University). One was outside of a city with a high crime rate that had her concerned. Then I asked if all that has been broadcast in recent months of Black people being shot by the police affected how she was feeling about sending her son off to college. Her response was straight forward. “Yes. How can I not worry about him being pulled over for doing nothing but being a young black man driving his car?”
_____________________________________________________________________________POLITICAL & OTHERWISE the book is now available on Amazon in paperback or e-book. I hope you’ll get a copy. It helps put all the pieces of these past 5 years together succinctly. Perspective is the key to the future. Here's a link to purchase: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L8D56HH
