Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart
– Ephesians 6:5-6
In the small town where I grew up, my elementary school had exactly one black student, and just a few kids of Hispanics, Japanese and Chinese ethnicity. Most of the "ethnic diversity" in our town was provided by the Italian fishing community. My parents were liberal Democrats, and worked hard to give their children a deep respect for people of all races, religions and ethnicity. As a college student in the liberal post-Vietnam 1970s, I became even more committed to the liberal cause, and thought that race would simply not be an issue for me.
A decade or so later, a job opportunity took me to live and work in New Orleans for three years. As a born-and-bred California boy, the experience was quite a shock. New Orleans was both amazing and a frightening – in many ways, it is more "third world" than most third-world countries. Magnificent casinos have janitors who never even finished the first grade. Boisterous Mardi Gras parades march past welfare housing projects. Some of the finest musicians in the world play for tips on Bourbon Street, next to drunks passed out on the sidewalks. One night, a close friend of mine who was an emergency-room doctor treated more than thirty unrelated gunshot wounds. Some of the public schools were excellent, but at least one school that I visited had broken windows, knee-deep grass, and a student yelling, "Hey, honky, what you doing here?" to the great amusement of his friends. And this was an elementary school.
When I purchase my new home in New Orleans, I was quite pleased, perhaps smug, that my middle-class street had five black families and five white families. All of them were quite friendly, and their Southern Hospitality worked its magic, making me and my family feel welcome. I had three school-age children, and before long I was good friends with a number of other families from the school.
My first lesson in personal racism came when I went into a neighborhood supermarket. New Orleans has strong lines of demarcation: One side of a boulevard can be upper-class mansions, and the other side a slum. Apparently, I'd unknowingly crossed one of these lines, from my middle-class, racially mixed neighborhood, into a neighborhood that was exclusively black (and mostly poor) residents. The patrons and employees at the supermarket were just as polite and helpful as could be. The problem was me. I was scared. Here I was, for the first time in my life, the only white guy in sight, and it made me really nervous. My rational side told me, "These are all just ordinary people, out shopping just like you." But I couldn't help it – deep inside me, I discovered a hidden pool of discomfort with people of a different color. It was a really good experience, one that brought me down off my liberal pedestal into the real world, and prepared me, a little bit at least, for my friend Billy.
One of the wonderful aspects of New Orleans is its diversity. I lived for a decade in the insular world of Silicon Valley. My best friends, to the last one, were engineers. At parties, someone "different" might be an accountant or an attorney. The first time I went to a party in New Orleans, I was amazed to find that among the guests were a tug-boat captain, an oil driller, a geophysicist, a senior editor of the Times Picayune newspaper, a couple waiters, a writer, a teacher, and a host of other equally diverse and fascinating people. This group of families would get together every week or two for a big crawfish boil or a barbecue, and enjoy the warm summer evenings and great conversation.
Among these guests was Billy, a tall, thin New Orleans native, the father of a half-dozen or so kids. He made his living as a handyman, doing whatever work came his way. He was a great guy, as nice as could be, always willing to come over and help me if I needed a hand with a project, soft spoken and polite. Although Billy was not well educated, he kept up with politics and current affairs, and he had no trouble holding his own in a debate with the editor of the Times Picayune.
My second New Orleans lesson in racism came one day when, in the course of some conversation, Billy confessed that he was an unrepentant racist. I was shocked, not only that my friend Billy held beliefs that I found so objectionable, but also that he was frank and open about it. "I know it's wrong," he said, "but I can't help it. I was raised that way. We were taught that blacks were inferior, and taught to look down on them. I've tried, but I just can't change my ways, I still can't see black folk as equal to whites." Billy at least had the courtesy not to use the "N word," but his confession was a real conundrum for me. If a friend of mine in Silicon Valley had made the same confession, I, and all of my friends, would have ejected him from our social circle. That sort of overt racism is unheard of in California. But in the deep South, racism is still alive and well, and in some circles isn't even shameful.
Then Billy said something that I thought was insightful. "At least I admit it," he said. "Lots of your friends here feel like I do. We were all raised here in the South, and that's what we were taught. These other folks may not want to admit it, but nobody here is colorblind." I thought back to my experience in the grocery store, and how my own latent racism had been there all along, and realized that Billy was right. None of us is without sin. At least Billy was honest about it.
And although I don't approve of his attitude even a little bit, I will say that, when Billy Junior and my son invited a black friend over to play, Billy the elder encouraged them, fixed them lunch, and never once showed any sign of his inner feelings. Billy may have been a racist, but at least he was working hard not to pass it on to Billy Junior and the rest of the his children. He knew his racism was wrong.
Billy understood instinctively that what you're taught as a child is very hard to unlearn as an adult. He wasn't able to undo his own biases, but at least he had the courage to be honest, and the strength to not pass his racism on to his own kids.
This story has an interesting epilogue. During my time in New Orleans, I became a big fan of a local Irish band that played every weekend in a pub on Bourbon Street. Sadly, this wonderful old pub was bought by a national restaurant chain, which converted it to a country-western karaoke bar, my worst musical nightmare. But I discovered that the Irish boys were going to be playing at a pub in Metarie, the suburb of New Orleans to the west by the airport.
I arrived at the pub and found a good seat near the band. They launched into their set, but for some reason, I felt very uncomfortable, and started feeling nervous. I couldn't figure out why, the place just seemed very odd and forbidding. Then about half way through the evening, it hit me: Every person in the bar was white. In New Orleans, this was very odd, so odd that I immediately realized this was not the bar for me. I'd changed from a man who was nervous in an all-black supermarket, to a man who was uncomfortable in an all-white bar.
It turned out the bar was owned by David Duke, the former head of the racist Ku Klux Klan organization. Blacks knew better than to go in. Racism was still alive and well in New Orleans. I bid my favorite musicians goodbye, and never saw them again.