In my youth I was a card carrying member of the SDS, NOW, and any other left wing radical organization devoted to eliminating sexism, racism, and Richard Nixon from office, not to mention ending the war in VietNam. I prided myself on my advanced views, my advocacy for the rights of the downtrodden, my vehement protest of unjust war and unfair advantage.
I prided myself on my feminist viewpoint and was very vocal in my defense of women's rights and the elimination of male supremacy in the world. I was eager for women's freedom to choose not only reproductively but in every other aspect of life. I was convinced that most problems in the world were the product of twisted male thinking. I supported revolution, believed that the world could be righted by the politics of dissent.
The civil rights movement, with it's emphasis on non violent confrontation and the use of the legal system to advance the rights of blacks, was a model of how progress could be made towards equality for all people. Martin Luther King was a hero to me. I grew up in a city suburb that was virtually lily white. I did not know any black people in my childhood, I'm not even sure I knew there were people of other races. So by the time I went to college and established my bon fides as a radical intellectual I was convinced that I had escaped the taint of racism, did not believe that there was a racist bone in my body. I was to find out differently before too long.
Towards the end of my sophomore year of college, 1971, I attended a showing of art in the gallery at our school that was done by black artists. There was a reception going on in the gallery and many black people were in attendance. This was notable since the city I went to college in was 80% Catholic and 98% White. We didn't often go places in that town where we were outnumbered by people of color or Protestants. I was standing with a friend smoking a cigarette as I looked over the crowd that was milling around. This was when it was more politically correct to smoke than not to, or at least considered chic by most of my peers. My friend asked me for a drag off my cigarette, a common request since we were always broke and cigarettes were a luxury we couldn't always afford. Many times we had shared cigarettes. As I handed it to her I said in a rather loud voice, "fine, take a drag, but don't nigger lip it." As the words fell out of my mouth a sudden hush came over the room, I learned what it means to be so quiet you can hear a pin drop. My mortification was absolute. I had committed a sin that in my own mind was so huge that I fell from grace instantly. I literally ran from the building in tears. I have not ever known such shame, before or since.
What I learned that day is that oftentimes the enemy lies within us. The sins of the father are indeed passed on. My own misguided sense of pride and ego trumped my desire for goodnesss. I deserved the shame I felt that day. It snapped me back from my self righteousness. To this day I feel the shame of that sin on my soul. If I had been more courageous I would have stood up and apologized for my own ignorance. I don't think I deserved forgiveness but I did need to acknowledge my egregious breach. I am an optimist in my belief that we all share in goodness, that day I learned that we also all share in sin. We are all part of the same body, each of us dependent on the rest, we all bleed when one of us is cut - whether in the Sudan, Afghanistan, or the ghetto of any urban city here in the U.S. we all are part of the problem and must be part of the solution. You don't get a pass on being in the world.
