I racist?

I racist?

When I started this blog I wanted it to be light hearted, somehow it has become far too serious.

For many years I had a wonderful friend and he was the most overtly racist man I have ever known. Wait a minute (interrogatory), you were friends with a racist?

This man would say the most disgraceful things about people… then one day I was driving down to town and saw him striding up the hill carrying four large bags of shopping and engaged in an animated discussion with an elderly Asian woman. Was I surprised… no, it was exactly what I expected.

I was talking to a friend of his some months later and was told of an incident where my friend, who was an ex-boxer and trained in martial arts, had seen off four youths who were trying to intimidate an Asian shop keeper.

Then at my friend’s funeral I found myself standing next to a young black man of West Indian descent – a man who would certainly have been the butt of many of my friend’s off the cuff remarks. I got talking to the guy and he told me that he had had trouble with a couple of his neighbours… and my friend, who was a work colleague, had sorted it out for him.

You see my friend was a verbal racist, but when it came down to it he was a thoroughly decent guy who believed in fair play. I always knew that if he saw anyone in trouble, black/white, man/woman, young/old he would intervene.

Would I?

Was he the racist or am I?

For many years I was connected with the Anti Apartheid Movement.

I suppose more than anything I think I am an egalitarian and a co-operator. My local branch of the AA set up a Youth Section and I asked if I could join. I was told I was too old. Fair enough, because at one point I was young enough. Then they set up a Women’s Section… and I couldn’t join… so I suggested may be they should set up a Black Section. No one saw the irony of my remark.

I was at a meeting later and was nominated for a position. A black guy stood up and said ‘all white people are racists’. Racism he told us was all around us and white people never challenged it. He had a point. I never attended another meeting.

I racist.

Just to return to humour for a moment. I arrived at an Anti Apartheid meeting held at a Friends’ Meeting House and a man I didn’t know was sitting alone outside the hall. He stood up, shook my hand, told me his name and started talking in an animated fashion about himself. Anyone connected with such organisations adopted a level of suspicion and cynicism that was probably rarely if ever justified and as a result I was quite circumspect in my replies. Others arrived and we all traipsed into the meeting room. Our new friend introduced himself again and then sat down and remained silent for about 30 minutes of our in depth discussion. Suddenly he stood up, apologised, said he had accidentally come to the wrong meeting and walked out. When I left an hour later I looked on the notice board. There were two meetings that evening and the other was Alcoholics Anonymous…. I have always smiled at the incident, but still, over twenty years later, feel sorry for the poor man.

There I go again, I have reduced humour to pathos….. oh well… perhaps next time.