Confessions of a Racist

Oh, sure, Crash is intertwined with more coincidences than an entire season's episodes of Seinfeld, and, yeah, maybe there's an unrelenting amalgam of racial conflicts, but for me, seeing that movie certainly served to trigger an exploration of my own evolution as a prejudiced Caucasian-American heterosexual male, privileged at birth. At the age of four, I was so innocent that, riding in the subway with my pregnant mother, on the way to my violin lesson, I pointed to a colored baby and said, "See, that's the kind I want." I didn't understand why my mother was embarrassed and shushed me.

By 1950, though, when my first girlfriend told me that she had dated a Negro, I blurted out, "Did you kiss him on the lips?" I was even more stunned than she was. Just hearing myself say that was a shocking wake-up call. It would be necessary to unbrainwash myself from all the nuances of bigotry that I had so thoroughly and unconsciously absorbed by cultural osmosis. I became involved in the civil rights movement and published anti-racist material in The Realist.

In 1961, Dick Gregory requested that I interview him. It turned out that we had the same favorite poem, Rudyard Kipling's "If" -- both of us kept a copy in our wallets. He told me how he first knew he was black at the age five, when white people would give him a nickel to rub his nappy hair for good luck, and I told him how I felt like a freak at the age of six, when I was a child prodigy and became the youngest concert artist in any field to perform at Carnegie Hall, and white people would rub my wavy hair -- for free. Gregory and I became close friends and fellow demonstrators. He told me that I was the first white man he'd ever invited to his home to meet his family. After dinner, I watched television with his kids and laughed with them at the Clairol commercial that spouted, "If I have only one life to live, let me live it as a blonde!"

In 1971, I had a radio talk show at a station where the ratio of whites and blacks was about even. There was a party at the home of a staffer, where a bunch of us -- same ratio -- were getting stoned in the kitchen, and becoming slightly hysterical as we took turns parodying racial stereotypes. A black acquaintance patted me on the shoulder and, not realizing that he had just entered, I continued in the established mode and said what was intended as a contribution to that running gag, "Oh, excuse me, I forget your name, you all look alike." It was as if I had punched him in the solar plexus. "Yes," he hissed, "we all do look alike." Now, 34 years later, I have a twinge of shame that my carelessness allowed me to hurt him like that.

Just a few days ago, I was watching the news when the bell rang. My wife Nancy went to the door. I could hear a salesman’s voice. He wanted to sell us window-washing equipment, but this wasn’t a good time for us. Instead of leaving his card, he increased the pressure. I called out, "She said not now!" He continued attempting to persuade her. I shouted, "Please leave!" On a visceral level, I felt bad, but when I looked out the window and saw an African-American walking away, I felt way worse. Equality was my original goal, but I seem to have become a reverse racist in the process.