A boy I knew years ago and I gave wrong directions once to a black family asking the way to Memphis. We sent them in the opposite
direction. I still worry about it.
There were three of us waiting in a parking lot on the main
highway through our town for a fourth rider. The owner of our car, I’ll call
him Joe, was giving us all a ride back to the University of Arkansas at
Fayetteville after a weekend visit home.
Joe was one of the biggest jerks I’ve ever known, but he had
a car and would give us rides home and back if we paid for the gas. As we stood
there, a car stopped with an African-American family inside. The man politely
asked for directions to Memphis, Tennessee.
He was headed in the wrong direction, headed, in fact, for
Dallas, Texas.
Before anyone could speak, Joe blurted out, “You’re headed
right, just keep going for 150 miles or so and you’ll be right there." Then man
thanked him and drove off toward Texas.
I say “we” gave them wrong directions, for I stood silent,
making me just as guilty as Joe. I have thought of that incident maybe hundreds
of times over the years, including on lonely nights sitting in a tower, or on a
bunker guarding a Navy base against attack by a known enemy.
The ghastly sin of bigotry and racism is also a known enemy,
and I have, on occasion, failed my country and my fellow human beings by
falling under its spell through silence or apathy. Maybe there are others that
feel that way too.
Oh, I have rationalized about the incident. Had I
interfered, I would have been left on the side of the road without a ride back
to resume classes the next day.
Interference may have led to a physical confrontation.
There was a third person who would have sided, no doubt,
with Joe and it would have been a question of whom to believe.
The highway was clearly marked and I’m sure the family
realized the deception before long.
It’s all bull of course. I was a coward and a bigot. My only
hope is that the incident may have helped form my later belief system. Maybe
Joe himself changed. On the other hand, maybe Joe was among the Neo-Nazis, KKK
members, white supremacists, and hatemongers that the President of the United States
of America has seen fit recently to defend. Who knows?
Maybe the incident served some distant purpose. I’ve thought
about it while driving home late at night through the Arkansas Delta through
swarms of insects as thick as fog. Often, I had just been the only white face
at a meeting held in a small rural church building for the purpose of planning
how to get a water system funded for one of the poorest communities in our
state. Maybe the Galilean would give me a little credit for that, and for speaking
out from time to time against hate. Who knows? By doing so, I've alienated some folks I had regarded as friends. Who cares?
As I say, maybe Joe changed. Sometimes education and
responsibility lead us to change our hateful ways for the better. I’m not
optimistic, though, after this past week, about the healing effects of
education and responsibility. They sure haven’t had that effect on our president. We can only weep as we remember Zion.
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A holocaust survivor and target
of the Charlottesville marchers.
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