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Shameful Behavior
I should’ve reacted. I didn’t.
My parents raised me to be open-minded and disregard things like religion and race.
One of my father’s closest friends, when I was a kid, was a black man named Hank. Our families were tight. Pop traveled a lot for work and it wasn’t uncommon for Hank and my mother to go pick up my Dad from the airport when he returned.
While I have no recollection of this, my mother told me a story about one particular time — since I don’t recall the event, it’d be impossible to say the year, but I’m guessing around 1972/3. We lived in Virginia at the time and my mother, Hank and myself went to pick up my father at the airport.
My wee self was walking in between them holding their hands as they were swinging me through the concourse to the gate. It being Virginia in the early ‘70s, apparently, people were aghast. Here was a white woman, walking with a black man, laughing as the swung a little kid.
When I noticed the people were staring and pointing, I asked my mom why everyone was staring.
Hank said, “Because I’m black.”
I looked up and asked, “What’s black?”
Fast forward to a few months ago.
I was in a Wal-Mart around where I live in New Haven, CT. The home of about five…
