Ruminations of a Retired Reprobate

"It is behind our tribal fences that we human beings develop our life-strangling prejudices. One cannot be fully human while continuing to violate the humanity of another which is what all prejudices encourage us to do."

 John Shelby Spong

I came across the above statement in Bishop Spong's latest book. The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic  -  

  Paula Deen is in the news right now because of her use of the "N" word.  She admitted to using while giving a deposition. At least she was being truthful and I am certain that in the fog of her own mind it was just telling the truth.  After all she didn't mean anything by it. Some people try to excuse her because she is 66 years old.  Well I am 71 and I don't use it. I also don't tolerate it around me.  In fact a person I used to know tried to friend me on Facebook but I remember her usage of racist terms in the past and blocked her when she tried to friend me.

My mother used to have a boss whom she adored and he was a really nice man. Or at least I thought so until I heard him use the "N" word.  Mom excused him because he had "grown up in a different era when it was all right to do that" - Funny she grew up in that same era and I never heard her use that word, ever.  I know that her mother did not have a prejudiced bone in her body.

My cousin Christine once berated a man in a public restaurant when she heard a man use it telling him that she "would rather that her (then two year old) daughter heard him say "Fuck" than that word!"  I admired her for that.    

When I was in college I marched in a civil rights march in Cedar Falls and some old man on a scooter drove past us yelling "N______Lovers" at us. 

I suppose I got to thinking about this because I went to the Jackie Robinson biopic 42 earlier this week. Watching the film was a very emotional experience for me. I grew up when he was playing ball. (I did not pay much attention to him or any other baseball player.  I did see the Dodgers play in 1958 in Los Angeles but he had left Baseball by then). Seeing the film took me back to my childhood. I had not been aware of the racism in our country at that time.  The film did a masterful job of showing what it was like for Robinson as he had to deal with it on a daily basis.

I think that breaking down the stereotypes happened because of the way he handled himself.  As his boss told him "people will only remember that a black man fought back.  By being a gentleman and allowing his teammates to see him as a human being he won them over.  When he was attacked they began to see him as one of their "tribe" and so they were being attacked also.  Dodgers teammate Pee Wee Reese once came to Robinson's defense with the famous line, "You can hate a man for many reasons. Color is not one of them." In 1948, Reese put his arm around Robinson in response to fans who shouted racial slurs at Robinson before a game in Cincinnati.

Seeing the film this week, reading about Paula Deen and then the Supreme Court setting voting rights back because "we have changed" (when we havent) brought it all back to me.  It seemed to me that the quote from Bishop Spong says it all.