Words of Wisdom

Originally Posted 6/11/07

I love my wife for a multitude of reasons – she’s a good mother, a good cook and she works hard to help support our family – but, one thing that I find particularly lovable about her is her sincere innocence regarding whatever happens in the world around us. Twice in the last few weeks, while in conversation with different women, loathsome remarks have been made that wholely upset her at their utter callousness. These repulsive comments were not directed at her, mind you, but they did strike deep in the well of her being, shaking the foundation of her unmitigated belief in human goodness.

The first of these came from our former neighbors who have just recently moved into a different house across town. They are a young couple, with no children and, though we invited them over several times for dinner and to visit, they never took us up on our offer – after D’s conversation with the young lady, I’m rather glad they never did. For the sake of privacy, I will just use her first initial, J, when recounting the exchange between them.

Diana: Have you had any interest in buying your house yet?

J: We haven’t officially put it on the market, but don’t worry, we won’t sell it to any of “them.”

Diana looks at her in stunned silence. Who is “them?” she wonders.

J: Or any Mexicans either, they’re almost just as bad.

Then the reality of the situation hits her like hammer and she looks into our former neighbor’s face that is filled with unmitigated disgust, and D is absolutely dumbfounded. How can any human being feel this way toward another who they don’t even know? How can skin color determine the worth of a person?

Then, a few days ago, she was confronted with the demon of bigotry once again when she was contacted by another young lady who had once been a close friend, but over time they drifted apart. For privacy’s sake, we will denote her with the letter M. M is someone we knew from the church we attended for a short time right after we moved to the Memphis area. We lived near M when we rented a house in the town of Horn Lake, an area we quite enjoyed, but, since the house we fell in love with was in the city of Southaven, we moved a few miles away from her and the town we called home for two years. M has a son (A) the same age as Rachel, so she often kept her for us in the months before Rebekah was born. Diana and M had steadily grown apart over the last couple of years, but this phone conversation drove what amounts to an impenetrable wall in between the two of them that I reckon will end any chance of a continued friendship.

Diana: I saw that your house was for sale the other day when we drove through your neighborhood. Are you planning on moving sometime soon?

M: Yes, well, with A about to start school, we wanted to move to a different area. All of our friends at church tell us that we don’t want him going to school in Horn Lake or Southaven, so we are looking at houses in another area.

Diana is again in a state of speechless bewilderment. Why does she have a problem with Southaven schools?, she wonders. Why would she say that to us when she knows that our kids will attend there?

M: We’ve been told that we don’t want to live north of Goodman Road, because that’s where “they” are moving to from Memphis. “They” just want to come in and take advantage of our schools.

M: So, we found this perfect house on a cul-de-sac and there were, like, 15 kids out playing and they were all white and looked nice.

Ahh, there it is. Once again the demon of racism and bigotry raises its ugly head and laughs at her and her unrequited innoncence. Diana comes to me filled with anger and sadness and she just doesn’t understand how somebody, anybody, can feel that way.

Growing up in the South, I’ve heard racist comments and jokes my entire life and, though I did not agree with the hateful statements, I would just shrug my shoulders and move on in a state of blissful ignorance at the damage that even the smallest remarks can inflict. Today I’m older and wiser, with kids of my own and cherished friends from nearly every minority group imaginable, and just the thought of an offhand utterance that would hurt them makes me cringe. When I hear about people saying these awful things, I think of my African-American friends and it hurts me. I think about the times in my life when I didn’t speak out against others who would say awful, terrible things about our fellow men and women who weren’t crafted to look like us, and the regret of my inaction is a stabbing pain in my well-being.

Now we return to the title of this post. I am not meaning to imply that those of us born with the genetic makeup of less melanin in our skin cells are solely to blame for society’s ills, rather, the beastly nature of humankind in general has extinguished the classic view of evil for me. No longer can I blame our depraved nature on some inherently evil spiritual being locked in a dualistic battle for cosmic supremecy. No, I think I’ve seen the devil and he looks a lot like us.