I think I may have found a Jew with a mind and some guts.
I have pointed out that one of the two people who really got this blog started is a black man.
For six years I have carefully replied each time a person who claimed he was a member of a minority group sent me an enraged e-mail, no matter how insulting it was. Every time the writer did not reply, and in most cases my reply bounced and I got the old “MAILER-DAEMON” bit, indicating that the brave person cursing me had not given his real e-mail address.
I respect the ones who at least give me a genuine address to reply to, even if they don’t respond to my reply. They have been taught in all the movies that an evil bigot like me will be crushed by some canned “You are a Hater” crap. When I reply with solid reasons for what I said, they simply can’t deal with it. But they gave me my say.
After five years of this, a black man actually wrote me back after my reply. We have been corresponding regularly ever since. It turns out he was born in West Columbia, South Carolina just like I was and he has the same totally out-of-date attitude I do, that somebody who is genuinely loyal to his own people and won’t back down is a good person and deserves listening to.
To both of us, race is not an abstract question. Race is what we were raised with as long as we can remember. As South Carolinians, he and I have dealt with a racial attitude and with the fact that people from the other race were, to say the least, close to us.
To a Southerner before this generation, race was as much a part of our childhood as carnal love for his mother was integral to Sigmund Freud.
When I go to my club, which is made up of people who are in recovery from narcotics and alcohol, I say, “One of the great things about being here is that there are so many things I DON’T have to explain.”
The same thing is true between me and this man.
Me and my fellow West Columbian were, so to speak, raised on the porch. We just talk. We don’t wonder why the other guy said what he said, and we don’t worry ourselves sick over what the “implications” of what the other guy said are. We just talk.
If he is offended, he doesn’t go to pieces. He explains it to me.
He got fascinated by a lot of my experiences, and said I should write an autobiography. I had to explain to him that I could not say publicly what I was saying to him. Others would be all over me about racial implications and Freudian crap. So the minute I mentioned a blog, he was all over me to go to it.
Our shared sense of humor is probably utterly alien to others. For example, he was competing in a contest and he said , “Like most Southerners, I hate to lose.”
I replied, “Yes, Southerners hate to lose. Half of us were slaves and the other half of us got stomped in the Civil War. Little problems like that do tend to give one a mild dislike of being on the losing side.”
Oh, God! Oh, God! Here I was trivializing the Oppression of Black People and the tragedy of the American War of Brother against Brother! How can any decent human being laugh at that?
He got a kick out of it, too.
Our problems in trying to help our respective races are very similar. My West Columbia buddy has tried to deal with the NAACP opportunists, the well-paid establishment pets called “spokesmen for the black community.” He has also talked plenty with black militants.
By the same token, I dealt with respectable conservatives who are the kept establishment opposition, like the NAACP, and I dealt with the Klansmen, the white militants. Respectable conservatives on our side are the exact equivalent of the NAACP spokesmen on his side of the fence and the my Klansmen are his black militants. We both respect the latter more for their sincerity, but they simply don’t have a clue about what to do and they respond to fear for their own people with hatred of others.
The instinct of both Klansmen and black militants is natural: they want to find somebody to fight. My buddy and I understand that perfectly, it is an old South Carolina attitude, but somebody has to do something smarter.
I am sorry to disappoint you, but “doing something smarter” is not what our correspondence is about. We talk because we enjoy it. There are huge lulls, like there were on the porch. He has a perspective on a vanished world I want to hear, and he wants to hear mine.
Now a Jew who raised hell with me read my reply and is also treating me like a person. A black South Carolinian and I understand the concept of “just talking,” but I wonder if I can explain it to a Jew who is apparently not from where I am from?
We have had a good exchange. Now I am going to send him this and see if he understands where I am coming from.
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