While quickly skimming local news to make sure I hadn’t missed anything big, I came across this story about a radical skinhead who wanted to change his life and get rid of his racist tattoos. I read it, then clicked to the next page. And the next. It was the second of a two-part story, so I soon dug up the first part.
This is a bit of a detour from the Tuesday Time-Wasters I’ve been posting, most of which are games or amusing stories. But I think it’s worth spending a little bit of your time to read these stories. And I want to tell you a story.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I spent a semester in math class gently trying to convince a fellow classmate that blacks and Jews were no different than he. Our teacher switched up our groups every month but, for some reason, that student and I wound up in the same group when we switched. We got along well, and I helped him with the math work while having discussions about racism. I was young, but by then I knew all about racism, and I knew not to shove beliefs down his throat. I knew that I had to try to understand where he was coming from, and to reach him from that angle.
The thing is, he played sports with black people; he got along just fine with them and joked with them, but he still thought they were inferior. He saw nothing wrong with the KKK. He wasn’t mean; he just didn’t understand the damage and devastation that racism can inflict — and that underneath, we’re all the same. Somewhere along the line, he’d come to believe differently. After a while, I told him that the girl who helped him pass math that semester was half Jewish. That threw him for a loop.
To his credit, he didn’t treat me any differently after that revelation. He actually started to come around. I remember the day he acknowledged that he really had no basis for judging people because of their skin color or ethnicity. I think he even began to realize that the remarks he thought were funny were actually hurtful.
And then he died in a tragic accident. It rocked our small school. The days afterward were so sad. But I had this weird sense of relief that I DID say something the first time he made a racist remark, that I DID take a stand, that I hadn’t kept silent until it was too late. I’ve always wondered what would have become of him if he hadn’t died. Would our discussions have been enough? I like to think they would — that he would have gone on to pursue the career he planned, that he would have worked with people of various races, that he would have had children who wouldn’t have any racist tendencies.
We can’t always take a stand. I said nothing when I had a man in my face, sporting Nazi tattoos all over his arms — including double lightning bolts, which the man in those articles also had because he’d beaten someone unconscious. I encountered that man while working as a journalist, and it was my job to listen to him, not to try changing his beliefs. In a way, I was doing my part by showing people how he viewed the world. (Plus, he was surrounded by pit bulls, while I was a female with a notebook and pen.)
But when you can speak up and say something safely, do it. Don’t give the other person a reason to hate you. Don’t go overboard. Just gently try to show them another view. You’ll never know when that will be your only chance to make a difference. And you’ll never know if your words will sink in and resurface later, when that person truly wants to change.