What possible reason could there be, to deny someone their human rights? That is, the right to equal justice under the law, the right to be treated decently and fairly by the legal system, by the banking system, and by the political system.
Black people are seen to be aggressive in some situations — too assertive, demanding, angry. Yet the white people who act in the same way are generally treated better by the police. It looks like white America is coming to a consensus that law enforcement is not what it seems. Police are encouraging or looking for what they consider provocative behavior — which may include not stepping away fast enough, not opening your pockets fast enough, or just being in the street at night — if you are Black.
My experience of Black people is different. I find them to be warm, compassionate, direct, honest, and open. It may have been the way I was raised.
My classmate James Beaman, one of only three Black kids in an otherwise all-white class in my grade school on New York’s Upper West Side, St. Hilda’s & St. Hughs, wrote about his experience at our school recently on Facebook. Here is what he said:
“I have been thinking about my life and the part that St. Hilda’s has played in it. I’m a 63 year old Black man. I grew up in the Bronx. I had very little interaction with White kids until I attended St. Hilda’s as a 3rd grader. Suddenly, I was a Milk Dud in a large bowl of milk! The other kids could have easily dismissed or mistreated me. For the seven years that I was there, they did just the opposite. I was treated warmly and with kindness. I was just another kid albeit one with darker skin and kinkier hair. Now I could say it was because I was charming, intelligent, a great athlete, funny and devastatingly handsome. But in actuality it was because my classmates were kind and most importantly, very enlightened. I’m proud to be Black and I’m proud to be an American, but I recognize that there are STILL racial problems in the country. But because of my time at St. Hilda’s and my classmates, I know what is possible and I am very hopeful.”
This moving account by my friend makes me wonder about why I was disposed to treat him fairly and equally, as we grew up and took classes together. Both of my parents came to America in the early 50’s, from Hungary. They knew nothing about the history of race relations in America. As far as I know, there were next to no Black people in Hungary at all. But that didn’t stop my Uncle and Aunt, who also came from Hungary, from being prejudiced. They did not seek or want the society of Black people. They took to racist stereotypes right away, I am sorry to say. They were Goldwater and Nixon Republicans. My parents voted Democratic. I still remember how vehemently my Uncle argued with me when I said we were all descended from Black ancestors in Africa.
Perhaps not being racist comes from experiences when you yourself are treated as less than human. That was certainly true of my mother, who, being Jewish, was raised in an atmosphere of pervasive discrimination. Quotas prevented her from studying medicine back in the old country, before things got a lot worse. So she was, I think, immunized against dehumanization. For my father, an idealist and student of classical Greece and Rome, and of the renaissance and the enlightenment — maybe his learning also predisposed him to be more humane. More than that, he was a creative man, a novelist and a poet, and loved his profession of college professor. That intellectual tradition should be conducive to following the Golden Rule — treating others as you would wish to be treated yourself. But then again, both the Greeks and the Romans had slaves — although they were not necessarily Black.
Yet the full answer is I think much deeper than that. Something happens to people, some kind of alchemy after which it is no longer possible to see “the other” as an enemy. Maybe this is a conversion experience of a sort.
Back in St. Hilda’s and St. Hugh’s School, peer pressure stood strongly against racial prejudice. Perhaps because so many of the children came from intellectual immigrant families clustered about Columbia University in those post-war years, the soil wasn’t conducive to the growth of racism. But this is not the whole answer, because we know of many people who, alone and in their heart of hearts, had an experience that turned them away from racism and prejudice.
It is on those White people, whether convinced by peer pressure, or whether responding to a personal conversion experience, that the future of American race relations rests.
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