Is It Any Wonder?

The day JFK was shot, I was substitute teaching at Hatch Junior High School in Camden. The kids were mostly black. I substituted at Hatch a lot because a lot of white sub teachers turned it down.

 One day, the kids got so out of control that Tom Foster, the Black dude who taught in the classroom next door, had to come in and restore order. I knew Tom from Rutgers. His father was Napoleon (Nap) Foster, who was about as high at the Camden post office as a Black guy could get. Nap and my father had gone to Camden High School together. My father, like most of his generation, was a casual racist, but when Nap died my father went down to South Camden to pay his respects. 

 

We lived in the suburbs, and when our football team was scheduled to play Camden, one of the assistant coaches, who had actually played for the Pittsburgh Steelers, told our team, “We're going to kill some jungle bunnies.” When he retired, he was celebrated for his contributions to the school and town.  

 

The first Black person I went to school with was in college. When I was in high shool, a Black family moved into town – briefly. Cars were driven across their lawn to leave deep tracks, ceaseless hangup phone calls were made to them, racist signs were left on their lawn. They moved out after less than a month. Mission accomplished.

 

I know guys who worked at high risk jobs – police, fire-fighters –  with Black men who literally had their backs, yet they use the word “nigger” as if there were no slur involved. There is again a casual, almost ingrained racism that is passed down. It doesn't even have to be spoken, but is implied throughout  so many aspects of our lives. And if that is the case with a WASP like me, brought up in the white burbs in South Jersey, what about those who were brought up where racism is in many ways spelled out on a daily basis? Is it any wonder that racism is still a way of life to so many Americans, fostered or implied, active or casual? It is still racism, and it is among the ugly, interlocking factors that fueled Jan.6. We sowed. Trump reaped.

 

Yet today my high school and home town are fully integrated and it is no big deal – now. Some of the ugliness has thankfully been absorbed by the passing of time, but it is deep and living and has been exposed in recent times in great and telling measure; the now-nonsense of the American Dream that has been the thin layer of myth laid over a darker reality has been yanked away by the convergence of Donald Trump and the pandemic.

It is a despairing sight, yet in many ways we are at a last ditch ground zero from which we inevitably move forward in time – to what is our choice and destiny.