One summer not too long ago, I was walking along the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey, getting acquainted with a new friend. We had traveled with a mutual friend. He asked me a deep question, what from my past did I regret the most. I had a hard time thinking of something at first. I think my friend was expecting I might have a terrible story of rebellion in my youth, but really, I don't have any such stories. I've never been drunk. I've never experimented with drugs. I've maintained my purity. After a time, I did think of something in my childhood that I regretted. It was not something that continuously nagged at me -- I believe God has forgiven me -- but it is something that I remember with pain when I recall it. At times, I want to travel back in a time machine to replay the scenario a different way. It has to do with how, in my easygoing and people-pleasing nature, I was sometimes manipulated into doing things I wouldn't normally get involved in.
In the community where I grew up, I had almost no exposure to people of color. My first exposure to black people was probably through television, through shows like "The Jeffersons," "Sanford and Son," "What's Happenin'," "Good Times" and maybe even Bill Cosby's "Fat Albert." In some of the neighboring towns that abut my own, the demographics would have been quite a bit different, but in my grade school, there were no black students whatsoever. Later, when I moved to the next neighboring town at age twelve, out of a class of 100 seventh grade students, there was one black boy. My first significant black friend was a boy I met in the eighth grade through a parachurch Bible study group. He was from the Dominican Republic and liked me very much. He would have liked to date me if I was able, but I was young, younger then he was by three or four years,and not allowed to date.
But further back in my childhood, when I was perhaps eight or nine years old, for a short while, there was a black girl my own age who lived in my neighborhood. I never saw her in school, since she attended a private Catholic school in town; however, she lived just around the block from me. A school friend, whose backyard was adjacent to mine, had befriended her, and there was one occasion when the three of us played together. The other two, my backyard friend and this girl, got into a fight at some point. I no longer have any recollection of what started it or what the cause of the conflict was.
What I do remember was that I was somehow manipulated into taking the role of the middle man, delivering hateful messages from one girl to the other. Each stayed in her own yard, and I walked back and forth carrying messages. One girl would tell me, "I'm not talking to her, but tell her (blank) for me." One of the messages to our black friend included the use of the "n" word...nigger. I remember qualifying it by saying, "This isn't me saying this, but she says..." And, I'll admit that I was an equal opportunity insulter, that is, I was being diplomatic in delivering the insulting messages from both sides.
Why would I participate in this? I'm not sure. Maybe, initially, I thought I might be able to play the peacemaker, but, of course, it worked out quite differently. It afflicted my conscience at the time, especially the use of the "n" word, even repeating it as the neutral messenger. Most likely my cooperation was due to the fact that the nature of my friendship to my backyard friend was a strange one. You might even call it an abusive relationship. She would take advantage of my placid nature by manipulation and sometimes made threats or became violent when I did not cooperate with her. Still, I wish now I'd had the backbone to stay out of it, or if I did interfere, to use more of a peacemaking effort rather than repeating the words like some sort of messenger parrot. I was being a pushover. So, this is one regret that brings me pain when I remember it.
On a different note, I remember when my nephew, Micah, who grew up in Maine, saw his first black person while on a family trip with us to the Statue of Liberty.
Like my early childhood, Micah did not see any black people where he lived. He was only two or three years old, and as he was too young to understand rules of etiquette or that it's impolite to stare, he stood gazing at this man with wide eyes as if to say "I've never seen someone who looked like you before!" My brother, Micah's father, was beginning to feel embarrassed. Happily, the man who was the object of his stares was not at all embarrassed and chatted with my little nephew in a friendly manner. My brother was pleased that this first experience for Micah was a positive one that did not instill in him any negative feelings of awkwardness.
The best book I've ever read on race or racisim is "One Blood." I read it while I was writing my novel, "And the Violin Cried," which deals with anti-Semitism. It is the opinion of the authors that there is no such thing, scientifically speaking, as race. There is only the human race. The whole concept of race, and, in fact, racism, by implying that different races evolved from different types of monkeys at different rates, is influenced by Darwinism and evolutionary theory. It is this evolutionary theory that inspired Hitler to feel as he did towards the Jews and the blacks. The Bible has a much more favorable view on humankind.
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