The Education of a WASP

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-one At first, the aftermath of Ann Peterson's Black Power discussion brought me only a vague, unidentifiable discomfort. I had written to Marc about the evening. He replied, praising me. "You have more soul than the so-called blacks in that group. You were speaking for me-but even more effectively. Those Toms listened to you because you're white." Marc's praise didn't please me. Instead it added to my concern that I had begun to substitute Marc's thinking for my own. On August 3, 1966, when Martin Luther King was stoned by white mobs in a West Chicago neighborhood, I had felt a deep contempt for "those whites" whose sick twisted faces looked out from our TV set. Yet the 6,000 whites who rioted when 800 marchers demonstrated peacefully for openhousing legislation were like the Midwestern lower-class people I had grown up with. I saw them, though, through Marc's eyes as The Enemy. I hated them. My surge of loathing toward these white Chicagoans frightened me. Was I becoming like some of the white radicals I had met? One thin, porcelain -skinned woman at a meeting had talked with narrowed, glittering eyes about her "racist suburban neighbors." She had seemed far mQre motivated by hate (of her neighbors) than love (of justice). I had also watched a white man nodding hypnotically when a black speaker at a civic meeting uttered what to me were vague, meaningless cliches. This white man's attitude toward black people was noticeably obsequious and his need to earn their approval was pathetic. Had any of these unnatural responses begun to apply to me? Only some of what I had learned from Marc helped when I appeared with the Philadelphia Panel of Women. I could answer the questions of the white suburban audiences we spoke to, but I grew impatient with their lack of information and their indifference. Several times, I felt my irritation had been too evident. At times like that Debbie Levy, the Jewish Panelist, was my most important anchor. Debbie, blonde and blue-eyed, had seen her mother enter the gas chambers at Auschwitz. If Debbie could survive unspeakable horrors and still patiently answer stupid questions like, "Why are all Jews rich?" then I had to try to stifle my impatience. Debbie had told me long ago that she used her awful memories as a reminder that she must never stand aside, as the "good" Germans did, and let another group of people be persecuted. It was Debbie who gave me an article written by a California rabbi. It may well have been one of the first to discuss black anti-Semitism. The article, "The Hands of Esau," by Harold Schulweis, had been published in the December 1965 issue of a Jewish magazine, The Reconstructionist. Even though I believed anti-Semitism among black people must surely be a minor problem, I was impressed with the rabbi's ideas. He dismissed what I knew to be true: that nonJews exploit ghetto people in exactly the same proportions as anyone Jewish might do. The memory of my own father proved this even if common sense had not. But the rabbi wrote that if even one Jew defiles Judaism by exploiting black people, it is the responsibility of all Jews to persuade - 259 - him, by confrontation, by moral pressure, to live up to the principles of Jewish ethics. I felt that this man's call for action among Jews was a wonderful example to other religious groups. It might inspire Protestants and Catholics to police the members of their churches who exploited poor people. I asked Debbie to give me several copies of the article. I wanted to send one to Marc Moses. He would be pleased, I thought, about Jewish concern . I was anxious too to send another copy to an old friend in New York, Dave Goldstein. Months ago, I had written Dave, an advertising man, about Marc's criticisms of ghetto supermarkets . Dave's agency handled a large national supermarket chain and I thought he might like to know that some supermarket chains had a bad reputation among black people. According to Marc, the least fresh produce, the most undesirable meat was sent to stores in the ghetto. Dave's reply-large heavy letters scrawled with a broad-tipped pen-had been, "Don't get involved in hopeless issues like race...