WESTMINSTER WEST — When I watch the racist violence at Trump rallies, it really gets to me. I see the faces of young people filled with hate and wonder who taught them to be so hateful.
I think of the song “You've Got to Be Carefully Taught” from the 1949 musical South Pacific. Here is one stanza:
“You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!”
It also recalls my own childhood. My father was a very mean and racist man. He never hit his children, but he lashed us with his verbal belt several times each and every day.
We coped, thanks to my mother and large doses of dark humor, but we paid for having such a father - oh, how we paid.
* * *
As a young child, I didn't know the definition of “racist” but I did know that my father didn't like black or brown people and he would rant about the “damned niggers.”
One time, I asked my mother why father hated people who weren't white, and she answered, “It's complicated.” She told me never to call people the “N word,” as she called it. She said it was a mean, nasty word.
Her answer confused me, but I knew by her look that the conversation was over.
One day, toward the end of third grade, I was walking home with a friend, who was black. Three boys came up behind us, one of them on a bike. The boy on the bike started running into my friend and calling her “nigger.” The other boys were laughing and saying things like, “Go back to Africa.”
My friend started to cry. I felt like my chest was on fire, and the next thing I knew I had pulled the brat from the bike onto the ground and was punching him in the face and yelling to my friend to run home.
I don't remember who pulled me off of him. We both ended up in the principal's office. Bike-brat was in pretty bad shape. I tried to explain what the boys had done, but the principal wasn't interested in my testimony. He ordered us to go home and warned me that he was going to call my parents.
I was angry that the boys weren't punished and terrified about going home.
When my father learned about the fight, he was furious, called me every name in the book, and came really close to hitting me. He didn't yell at me for being violent, he yelled at me for defending a “nigger.”
That day is seared into my memory as the day when fear of my father started being replaced with hate.
I hated him for years.
* * *
When I was 16, one evening at dinner my father started going on about how if I ever dated a “nigger” he would disown me.
I was so angry that I started shaking. I told him that I would date whomever I damn well pleased, and I thought he was disgusting.
For a second there was a flash of pain in his face - I had won.
But not really. Hurting him didn't solve anything, and my poor mother was, as always, stuck in the middle.
By my college years, I realized that hate was a dead-end street with no winners. I even tried to find out about my father's untold story in an effort to understand his racism.
I learned that he had a really tough childhood, but I didn't buy that as an excuse. Lots of people had tough childhoods but didn't end up being hateful people.
I always despised my father and I sure didn't respect him, but I didn't hate him by the time I reached adulthood.
During his final years, he suffered a long, painful death, and I grew to have compassion for him. I spent one summer helping to care for him and remember how his feet were a mess from diabetes.
I would take off his slippers and socks and soak his feet in Epsom salts and then dry them. His eyes welled up with tears a few times during that ritual and I felt bad for him.
My mother was right: it was complicated.
* * *
After college, I lived in New York City for a few years, including a five-month period when I sublet a small apartment in Hell's Kitchen, a really rough neighborhood.
Sometimes I would walk by a group of young Hispanic guys who always seemed to be hanging out on a street corner known as a place to buy drugs. They would often whistle at me, and I would just roll my eyes and give them a give-me-a-break look.
One day, one of the guys started walking beside me, and it made me nervous. He asked why a pretty white girl was in that neighborhood. I told him that I lived nearby and was just trying to get by.
He told me that he was going to walk me to my door, since it was his job to protect the neighborhood. I asked him if he was a drug dealer, then immediately gave a silent curse for asking such a stupid question.
He looked at me sideways and smiled and said that was personal. I knew I'd guessed correctly.
As we approached the entrance to my apartment, I became really nervous, but he told me to “be cool” - that he wasn't going to hurt me. And he left.
Once inside my apartment, I questioned if I would have been so nervous if he were white. I concluded that I would have been nervous about any guy in that neighborhood, but I was probably more so due to his race. I was disturbed by my conclusion.
The next time he escorted me home, I told him my name but he said that he was always going to call me Pretty White Girl. I told him that I was always going to call him the Real Dealer - “RD” for short - and that made him laugh.
And so it came to be, three or four times a week, the Real Dealer would escort Pretty White Girl to her apartment. As I became more comfortable with RD, we spent most of our walks teasing each other and laughing. He was a really sweet guy.
Sometimes I wondered if he beat people up, given his line of business, but I didn't want to know about his dark side. Our time together was short and sweet, and more sweetness was something we both needed in our lives.
I told a friend about RD and she was aghast about my fondness for a drug dealer. She said that drug dealers were evil, period. I told her that I thought there were a few angels and a few devils among us, but most people lived somewhere in between. She didn't budge, nor did I.
Right before I moved out of Hell's Kitchen I baked RD some cookies, and he seemed really touched. The last time I saw him, I wanted to give him a hug but instead just shook his hand and told him that I'd miss him. For one last time, he told me to “be cool.”
I think of RD from time to time and wonder if he found a better life, one that honored his sweet side. I hope that he lives in a safer neighborhood and has a Pretty Girl to love, and I like to imagine that he tells his kids and grandkids to “be cool” when life gets rough.
* * *
In my early thirties I lived in Oakland, Calif., with my husband, in a racially mixed neighborhood where the ring of gunshots could sometimes be heard in the night.
The first and only neighborhood party that we attended had only white guests. I wondered if any blacks had been invited but sensed the answer was no. I didn't say anything, but it bothered me.
One of the women said that she noticed me walking around the neighborhood and warned me not to do so. I just smiled at her and kept walking.
I worked about eight blocks from home. One lovely day, I decided to walk home via another route. About halfway down one street, a little girl was riding her tricycle. I said hi but she ignored me.
Then two boys, who looked to be around 7, started yelling at me from a porch. One boy said to get out of his neighborhood, and he called me a “honky bitch.”
I should have kept my mouth shut, but instead I told him not to hassle me, that I just wanted to go for a walk on a nice day, and I addressed him as “little boy.”
Then all hell broke loose. The boy said those days were over and started cursing at me.
At first, I was totally confused and didn't know what he was talking about. Then I realized he thought I'd said “boy” as in the derogatory term that whites used to address black men, so I told him when I said “little boy” I was referring to his age.
By that time, both boys were off the porch and lobbing me with rocks from a pile near the sidewalk. A rock just missed my head. Then I felt something crash into my legs and heard the little girl calling me “honky bitch” over and over as she tried to run me down with her tricycle. She couldn't have been more than 4.
I fell down as a rock hit me. I felt like I was in a creepy, grade-B-horror-flick version of my third-grade experience and decided to run for it, much to the glee of the children.
The whole thing shook me up, and I was angry with myself for saying anything and being so clumsy about saying “little boy” - it just wasn't on my radar that he could take it in the way in which he did.
I was also angry at the children's violent response. Who taught them to be so mean and racist?
When I reached home, I breathlessly told my husband what happened and then called the cops. I wanted to talk with the children and their parents but didn't feel safe doing so without a cop, and I didn't want to drag my husband into it.
The cops arrived quickly and took notes. Then they asked me to drive around with them to see if we could find the children. In the car, one of the cops turned to me and asked if I fought back. I said no, they were just children and I didn't want to hurt them.
His face got all red and mean, and he said they weren't children, they were animals.
I was stunned and didn't respond. I decided that even if I saw the children, I would lie if the cops asked if they were my attackers.
The street was empty. Those children knew the deal far better than I did.
I don't know what was worse: my own clumsiness and naiveté, the children's violence, or the cop's hatred. A part of me still wanted to find the children and their parents so we could talk about what happened, but I didn't. I was afraid of being attacked.
I never walked down that street again, but that little girl haunted me for months, and when I think of her I picture her as my mirror image: me as a little white girl who was taught to hate black people, and her as a little black girl who was taught to hate white people.
* * *
When I was young, I thought the years would give me answers to life's harder questions, but I was wrong.
I find that the years just bring more questions, and some of the more important answers have come from my past, specifically from the people in my past.
A mother who showed me there was beauty and humor to be had no matter how empty your pockets, be it the first wildflowers of the season or an Oscar Wilde quote.
An aunt and uncle who took me camping by the lakes and forests and showed me that couples could be loving and call each other “honey” and that life was always more fun with a dog by your side.
A big-hearted first-grade teacher who instilled a passion for reading and in so doing opened up whole worlds to me.
An amazing humanities teacher who could mesmerize the loudest and crudest among us with stories of soldiers for justice whose only weapon was the determination of their convictions.
A music teacher who taught me to sing instead of weep. Wonderful high school friends who kept me out of trouble. (Mostly!)
RD, who showed me that I could “be cool” even while living in Hell.
And so many others whose influences have stayed with me all of my days, leading me to find some of the answers that I seek.
When my thoughts turn west and I think of the little girl on the tricycle, who must be approaching 30 by now, my wish for her is that life has given her some version of those life-affirming influences, so when the violence and racism and just plain meanness of the world overwhelms her, she isn't tempted to join the haters.
Instead, I hope she opens her heart, takes a deep breath, tries to be cool, and admits that it's complicated.