I teach in a public high school in Los Angeles that is more than 80 percent non-white, and shortly after the presidential election some white supremacist teenagers made their presence known on campus.
The day after the election, at an impromptu protest in which hundreds of students walked out of class, a white student ran around shouting, “No more Mexicans! No more Mexicans!”
Two days after the election, an African American female basketball player found the words, “The KKK is going to get you,” marked on her locker.
A few days later, a student walked into his classroom and shouted “White Power.” I am told he was removed from school, not because of what he said but because he had threatened to kill his mother.
I was raised in the 1950’s and 1960’s in an Orthodox Jewish family in Houston, Texas and was well aware of prejudice.
One of my earliest memories is being pulled away from a water fountain from which I was about to drink and being held over a taller, refrigerated water cooler by a white woman who I didn’t know. She said, “You can’t drink from that fountain. It’s for colored.”
I attended public schools and these things happened:
My fifth-grade teacher read us Little Black Sambo, narrating the story in a demeaning accent.
My eighth-grade music teacher went on an anti-JFK speech. The next day, President Kennedy was assassinated. She never apologized or talked politics to us again.
My tenth-grade history teacher used the word “ne-gra”.
My eleventh-grade history teacher quoted from J. Edgar Hoover’s Masters of Deceit and warned us that communists and liberals were planning to lead the country into totalitarianism.
One of the smartest and most popular girls at my high school invited a bunch of friends to her house on a Sunday afternoon where her father attempted to recruit us into The John Birch Society.
My varsity basketball coach, preparing us for a game against the all-black, reigning state champion Wheatley Wildcats, drew a picture of a knee on the chalkboard and said that blacks have an extra muscle behind their knees which allowed them to jump five or six inches higher than us white guys. So, we’d better block them off the backboards or they’d run us off the court. They did.
That March, when those same Wheatley Wildcats traveled to Austin to defend their state championship, my buddy and I bought extra tickets and scalped them in front of the gymnasium before the final game.
A good old boy asked me, “How much?”
I said, “Five dollars.”
“But tickets only cost two dollars,” he said.
“But the game’s sold out and tipoff’s in ten minutes,” I said.
“Well,” he thought it over. “I wouldn‘t want to Jew you.”
After graduating from the University of Texas—Austin, I lived in New York City for four years and since 1979, I’ve lived in LA.
And I don’t remember hearing such comments or being confronted with such in-your-face bigotry since leaving Texas.
Until now.
Days after the election, I signed in, in the main office and was walking alongside a colleague on our way to first period when she asked me if I’d heard that morning’s NPR interview with Trump backer, Joel Pollak.
I said I had, and we agreed his take on Breitbart News and ours were worlds apart.
And then she said, “And he’s a Zionist!”
I was stunned by the hate, which accompanied her words.
A moment later she was gone, headed toward her classroom.
I stood there, feeling a sense of shock and rage.
The following day at a lunch time going-away party for a colleague, I asked if I could have a word with her. She agreed.
I told her that I was taken aback by the disgust in her tone when she’d used the word “Zionist.”
I said, “I understand that some equate Zionism with the Israeli settlers’ movement to expand Israel. But do you really believe Israel doesn’t have a right to exist? I mean in light of the Holocaust, you don’t think Jews have a right to their own state? Even if there’s a two-state solution?”
“Well, I’ve done a lot of research on the subject,” she said. And she went on to say that Israel is another example of European colonialism. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”
And she was gone.
Much later, I felt like asking her why she doesn’t give her million-dollar home to Native Americans since California is another example of European colonialism.
But I don’t think that fast on my feet.
What I do think, and what stuns me, is that on this quiet, apolitical campus on the fashionable Westside of LA where I’ve taught for the past nine years there is suddenly bigotry to the right of me. And bigotry to the left of me.
These days I’m experiencing a déjà vu like the cruelty I witnessed in my youth in one of the reddest states; it’s seeping into even the bluest corners of my adopted blue state.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
Thanks, Dennis, for adding a few rays of sunlight. We have to make it clear that a new normalcy is not upon us. Wrong is wrong and it will always be so. Don’t back down and don’t be belittled. Your voice on that campus and in this forum matters more than ever.
Thanks Ken. And am I dreaming this up or did we meet at the DG Conference in LaJolla the summer before last.
There is no doubt that the social environment for many of us, regardless of the color of the state in which we live, has been roiled by the bruising Presidential campaign and election, and continues to this day. And will likely continue for the forseeable future. For me, it is as though a mean, toxic, racist, genie has been released from the bottle, although people are affected in different ways by either what they say and do, or what is being seen and heard. For years, out of politeness – political correctness? – the majority of Americans have either avoided… Read more »
Kevin, precisely and beautifully stated. That’s exactly what I and many people I know feel and I appreciate that you spelled it out so thoughtfully.
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Lots of turmoil around you Mr. D. One thing with America today – even more sad – is that out Gen z kids and most Mills are more obsessed by their mobile devices (phone/pad) then they are about any reality. Israel – est 80% if kids you talk of have no idea of what the issues are there or that it is one of the top Palo Alto like places in the world. Most of the kids stupid mobile games come from there. It is also one of the most powerful countries in the world. They will settle this 2… Read more »
TRedd, thanks for writing. But what’s with the “hunch so you look shorter??” I was doing my best to get my dog in the photo since he’s a looker and that way the attention could be on him.
Interesting article read by a fan of the Good Men Project. From my personal experience, bigotry is not so easily decoded. There are reasons for everything, including why people believe and behave the way they do. I personally wish we could focus on the progress that has been made and talk about it as much as the bubbling up of harmful ways of thinking and action that will always be with us because we are human, and we fail all the time..
Glad you found the post interesting. I find that the current moment is a difficult time to focus on progress, when decades of progress on climate protection, civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights and our social safety net look as they might be rolled back or worse.
What specifically gives you that impression?
I have seen progress in my own family in terms of bigotry and racism. In our family it has .taken an effort to understand where people come from and establish very strong boundaries for what is acceptable. In just one year, I have watched my father’s sister go from a hysterical racist rant about my nephew’s precious African American wife to a full body hug. It can be done. I cant be responsible for the law, but I can put it to work in my own world.
What happen to the “edit” option when posting?
I don’t know. But I’ll ask.
I have also thought about this a lot, and my views have changed a few times. My personal opinion is that Britain had no right to establish Palestine as a homeland for the Jews, so I agree with your colleague on that, but denying Israel legitimacy just because of its origins is antisemitic because, as you hinted, most countries were established by force. I think Israel pays the price for emerging in an era when it could not simply crush all opposition without mercy, as all countries did before the 20th century. If it had been able to do so,… Read more »
Your a teacher, your article addresses racism yet you refer to it as bigotry-there is a difference, look it up.
I wll. Thanks.
The trouble is that the phrase”anti-Semitism” has been bandied around so often(mainly by partisans of Israel Gentile as well as Jewish) that it’s all but lost its meaning! I was once accused of anti-Semitism simply for advocating a boycott of the upcoming Wonder Woman film(due out next year) simply because the title role was played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot(who has publicly supported Operation Cast Lead)!
Seems to me there is too much focus on people and groups looking to be offended. We have more in common than we have differences. Drop your “hyphen” and be an American. Fix America for Americans. Realize that most solutions lie somewhere other than the hard left or hard right’s answer. We have actual problems that deserve thought and attention.
Hill, you make some very good points. Thanks for taking time to write. I am not looking to offend or being offended, but there are instances when some words, in my opinion, cross the line. And I’m totally with you that we should fix America for Americans. I don’t see how anyone can disagree with that.
You said “fix America for Americans. I don’t see how anyone can disagree with that.” This s a position that Trump took but was pegged as a racist homophobe etc… So I really don’t think you mean what you say here. In so far as your quotes from various fools I’d love to, as a white man (and a Catholic), quote the countless comments I’ve experienced through the years. I won’t repeat them for one simple reason, I see the people who have said such things as ignorant and will not group them. I refuse to take a few and… Read more »