wandering thoughts on prejudice

Wandering Thoughts on Prejudice

 

Maybe we can work up a healthy disagreement on this topic.  My perception is that White Anglo Saxon Americans have a history of deep prejudice toward almost anyone who does not conform to their "standards". 

This can change with whatever is going on in the world, but it still comes down to hatred  and mistrust toward those who are different.  For any reason. 

I grew up during the Second World War and attended an all white middle class school in Seattle.  My class mates did not like Negros.  It didn't matter that none of them knew a Black person.  They also sang cruel songs and said mean spirited things about Jews.  Of course the Japs and the Nazis were fair game because we were at war with them.  But Jews and Blacks? 

One of my school chums told me that he and some of his friends had great fun going to a Negro Church on Sunday evening and listening to the people shout and watching them roll about on the floor.  "Better than the circus side show", he told me. 

In high school, I remember my friends coming to me after my sister and I had invited a fellow student who was Black, to our Halloween party.  They told me that if I ever invited him again they would not come to our party. 

The church my first wife and I attended was an all white congregation.  Two young sisters, from a Black family, came to Sunday school several times.  It only took a few visits for them to feel the cold shoulders.  Their parents were both teachers.  They were good, decent people but no one from church ever invited them to attend. 

A fellow showed up for church one Sunday and sat in the back of the church.  It was nearing Thanksgiving and the preacher was giving a talk about reaching out to others less fortunate than ourselves.  My wife and I went to this fellow, a Mexican American, and asked if he would like to come home for dinner.  He did.  We learned that he was out of work and had a family back in Mexico that he was trying to move to the US.  We hired him to do yard work and odd jobs and then invited him for Thanksgiving dinner.  He moved on after being shunned by most of the good Christian people in that church.  So did I. 

 

Curious Carl