1968 was a tumultuous period for our country and a time of great awakening for me personally. I was just 13 then, a boy born and raised in the south. My interests were no different from most of my contemporaries. I enjoyed sports and the outdoors, and I was obedient to my parents who did their best to raise me in the ways they had been taught.
My awakening occurred one Spring Day in 68 when my father and I were returning home from a fishing trip. We had the windows down in his pickup listening to country western music when the announcer interrupted the program for a breaking story. Dr. Martin Luther King had just been murdered. I knew little of Dr. King’s work, but I knew he stood for passive resistance and equality for all Americans, black and white. On television, he seemed fearless of those who opposed his philosophies, and even as a child I respected his courage and strength. As the commentator described the events leading to his death, I will never forget my father’s reaction. His words remain forged in my consciousness like a smoldering brand embossed in my mind.
‘That bastard got what he deserved!’ He screamed.
My father was a big strapping man, and I was frightened by the sudden anger in his voice. But despite my fear, his outburst triggered an entirely different emotional response within me. I stared silently out at the passing landscape as I pondered this man’s death. It would mean his wife and children would be raised without a husband and a father. Their lives would be changed forever. Young boys often idolize their fathers, as I did mine but, on that April day, I knew I would never, ever share my father’s prejudice and hatred.
I was the eldest son of educated parents born and raised in a small town in Texas. Life growing up in the south in the 60s was a simple unencumbered existence. As children, we went to school, studied, and did our chores. It was a life drenched in obedience and tradition.
My father dictated the standards that were deemed acceptable in our household. He was a strict disciplinarian and raised my brother and me as I suspect he was raised. Words such as ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’, terms that seem to have been lost in recent generations, were some of the first I learned as a child. He was a stern man who showed little affection for me or my brother. Despite that, I desperately sought his approval as is often the case in father and son relationships but that all changed in April of that year.
In the late 60s, our country was at the height of the Vietnam conflict, and graphic coverage of the battles was displayed in the media. While soldiers died in the war, protestors burned their draft cards and demonstrated against the government. My values were based on strict discipline and obedience, so dissension was something I struggled to comprehend but as I matured, I began to see there were other ways of thinking beyond my own.
My first year in high school marked a time of change, anger, and finally acceptance and moderation for many. It brought with it, forced integration into the school I was attending. For a naive 14-year-old freshman who had never been in the same room with a child of another race, my education was about to begin.
Each day, the hallways were filled with students, black and white, their eyes full of anger and hate as they stalked past one another. Inter-racial fights were common. I didn’t understand their motivation for fighting. I doubt they did either. But over time, the two groups reached an equilibrium as we began to normalize our differences, migrating to an unspoken compromise like two warring countries agreeing to a silent truce.
In Texas, high school football is a rite of passage for young men with the athleticism to compete. I was blessed to be given that ability, and football became the great equalizer for me. We practiced as one, black and white. We sweat and suffered together. As a team, we shared the glory when we won, and the disappointment when we lost. The color of the players’ skin behind the facemask didn’t matter to me. Football was the vehicle for many of both colors to gain mutual respect.
Looking back at my childhood, I am grateful for many of the lessons my parents taught me. But not all their ways were my ways, and thanks to God’s grace and that emotional event in 1968, I found my way through the quagmire of untruths but as enlightened as I have become relative to my roots, and as hard as I’ve strived to discard some of the fallacies of my heritage, my whiteness will always be a barrier that keeps me from truly understanding those who are not like me. God didn’t give me a brilliant mind, but he graced me with the wisdom to know my limitations.
I will never know the feeling of having another human hate me simply because my skin is black. I’ll never feel the disappointment of being denied a promotion or job because I am a minority. Though I may be able to empathize with other races, I can’t walk in another’s shoes or bare the burdens they carry. For better or for worse, I will always be white.
Almost a decade after my awakening, I witnessed a young black man fall from the edge of a pier into the waters of Galveston Bay. When he didn’t come to the surface, I dived into the water, finding him in the depths, unconscious but alive. He had struck his head on the edge of the pier when he fell, but thanks to God’s grace he suffered no ill effects. I was no hero. I did what any other human being would have done. But I wonder. If God had not opened my eyes to the truth about bigotry when I was a child, would I have hesitated to put myself at risk for this man? Would I have first seen the man’s color, or would I just see a person in need?
Two years later, I was going through a bitter divorce and was heartbroken and despondent. This same man, who had since become my friend, recognized my pain, and lifted me up, refusing to allow me to wallow in guilt and self-pity. He saved me, dragging me up from the depths of my depression. We still remain friends to this day.
Until just a few years before his death, my father’s prejudice was a giant cultural wedge that separated us, inhibiting our ability to interact as father and son. But over time he mellowed, his anger softening to one of tolerance and empathy. I too evolved thanks to God’s help, and though my intolerance for bigotry and prejudice still remains, I have come to realize the anger in my father’s heart stemmed only from ignorance.
I sometimes reflect on that moment in 1968 riding in my father’s truck, and how my life may have been different if the Lord had not opened my eyes to the truth but I will forever be grateful for his hand in helping me find my way.
5 thoughts on “ Awakening From Racial Prejudice”
Browing through, I came across this story.
What an exceptional man you are. Thank you for sharing this inspiring thought provoking story.
Thank you H. N
from Norway
I was very blessed to attend a Catholic inner-city grade school, in a financially devastated area in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We live in the Rust Belt, so it was no disgrace for us to come from poor families.
Many Black families chose to send their children to Annunciation, and they were all Protestant. Most of us were 2nd generation children of Eastern European, Irish, and Italian ancestry. Our pastor was an Irishman from Mayo. Our parish also hosted a seminarian from Chad, who studied at our local university, and who asked us to call him Jim.
Without being told, somehow, we all knew that if we *ever* let the N-word pass our lips, or did anything that disgracefully betrayed Catholic teaching, we were done at school – expelled – no questions asked. And that our parents would be humiliated by our behavior.
The Protestant students were given the option of sitting in on our Religion classes or sitting in the hall (with the door open) with a chapter of the Bible, on which they would be quizzed later. Almost all stayed with us and learned our Faith, although most did not convert at that time.
I remember falling down at recess and scraping my knees once – we only had asphalt to play on, so I was pretty bloody. Jim the seminarian picked me up, and like the kind gentleman he was, carried me into the secretary’s office to get cleaned up and bandaged. I will never forget his gentle manners and how he made me feel like a lady, even though I was only 8 years old.
We all knew very well that prejudice existed, but quite honestly, I never encountered blatant prejudice until I graduated from my Catholic grade school and entered my public, lily-white high school, where I heard all the forbidden racial insults of that time – some directed at me, as a girl with an Italian surname. My father worked on the road crews, and he worked with Black and Puerto Rican co-workers. I never heard him insult or call them names.
Perhaps I was sheltered, but I would not trade my experience for growing up in a more prosperous school and neighborhood for anything.
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Thanks for this article. MLK is honored and respected by most today (at least I hope so). But, even as a northerner, I recall the attitudes in our Irish/Italian Brooklyn neighborhood as suspicious and critical of MLK. Already, we were hearing that Blacks had been “given” enough, and “hated” “our” country. And MLK’s opposition to the Vietnam War led many in my family, parish and neighborhood to label him a “communist.” Black people belonged in Bed-Stuy or on the other side of Flatbush Avenue – it was the natural order of things. And there was no room for them in the police, fire or sanitation departments, or most union shops – those were “white” jobs. In our Catholic parish, I can’t remember a Black family. Racism was deep and widespread. We’ve come a long way. But with a recent history like that, it’s no surprise that we still have quite a ways to go.
This is an inspiring story. Thank you.
I was not raised in the South so the reactions of the (white) adults around me to MLK’s assassination were not as extreme. But they were uniformly negative. The only positive one was from my mother, who said, “He was not a bad guy, but the way he was talking, he had it coming.”