Nearly 51 years ago I graduated from Morgan State College. I was the only white boy in my graduating class, the only one in the school. My story is a long one, better read in detail in the memoir I am writing, "The Education of A White Boy." I have been immersed in writing this as the situation in Baltimore has played out. With the military in the streets of the city of my birth, and white America's complete misunderstanding of the situation, I feel compelled to say something now. As a young man I served honorably in the United States Marine Corps. I'm not sure where that puts me on the liberal spectrum, but of this I am sure: my beloved country is, in great part, overt or subtle, a nation of bigots. After Morgan and before graduate school at Yale for which my undergraduate education beautifully prepared me, I worked as a social worker in Charm City. I worked and walked those same streets currently shown on television wearing suit and tie. I felt no fear, and the people treated me well. I was there to help, albeit insufficiently, and it distresses me terribly that those neighborhoods are still suffering from the disease of racism just as they were 51 years ago: the decrepit living conditions; the almost total lack of economic opportunity; miserable, badly stocked grocery stores. Once at Yale I got a hankering for Kentucky Fried Chicken. There were no outlets around campus so I took a bus to one I found in the Black community. I was shocked to discover a bucket full of the cheapest parts of the chicken. They were inedible. Even with my tiny grad school budget, I threw them away. I tossed them in a garbage can and, you know what, a man took them out, ate one, and carried the rest of the bucket up the street.
Of course, I feel tremendous anger at all the bigotry I still encounter, fury when white America lets a Cliven Bundy get away with assault rifles pointed at federal marshals, absolute disgust when people use the word nigger, true disdain for all the politicians who just don't get it. I wouldn't watch Fox news if you held one of those assault rifles against my skull because my blood pressure would rocket into the danger zone. I am as angry as the bigots are, and yet there is a part of me that feels sorry for them. What must it be like to live with that much hatred in your system? What must it feel like to imagine you are being replaced in this world by aliens with different skin, baggy pants, and music you find intolerable? People do work hard for their dollars only to have their resentments stoked and fed by the bigots in power: pastors, politicians, rapacious businessmen. I would not want to feel such fear and bile. What a miserable way to spend the day!
