The Scene staff
Are you aware that hate is a learned behavior?
Oh yes, my friends, learned. By everyone it seems – family, friends, peers, acquaintances. No one is safe.
Hate can breed like a gaggle of KKK rabbits. It knows no boundaries in terms of race, ethnicity, sex, age, economics, social status or common sense.
Let me tell you about one of my early lessons in racial understanding.
On a Saturday evening in 1972, my father, a Shriner, took us to the Cincinnati convention center to see the Shrine circus. Lions, tigers, bears, oh my!
On the way home, my father casually told my brother and I, “No work, no ball.”
By work, he meant making our beds, mowing the yard and running down the hill, three-tenths of a mile as the crow flies, to get Dad some smokes (as many kids did in that different time and place).
The next day started like a typical Sunday, free and easy. I loved Sundays. But this one was not typical.
Around 7:30 a.m., while going outside to play, Dad stopped us in our tracks.
“Get into your school clothes,” he said. “You two are coming with me.”
Oh no, I thought, what have we done? My dad, leader of men, working his father thing. In order to teach us, he had to drive his point home. Hard.
“We’re going to the Shriner’s burn hospital in Cincinnati,” he said.
I looked at my brother and joked, “Did Dad burn Mom?” because this seemed so out of character for him.
Our family was divided about race. Dad grew up in Memphis and graduated from L.C. Humes, an all-white high school where Elvis went.
His sister and brother, two of four siblings, were as backward in their thinking as anyone at the time, as I only found out later.
Hold on, this next part will make you cry.
Third-floor burn unit, 26 children, ages unknown. We couldn’t tell their gender because they had been torched, burned beyond recognition.
They had stumps and bumps, a few eyes, wrapped thighs, smelling like antiseptic barbecue.
“My God, Dad’s going to burn us,” I thought.
Imagine my surprise when he gave us an easy challenge: “Boys, tell me one thing you see.”
“They are all burnt, Daddy,” my brother answered.
A head nod. A head shake. “Way to go, brain cramp,” I thought. Now we’re screwed.
“Boys, there are 12 kids in there who are colored. Could you tell?” he asked.
Well, I knew this answer: “No, Dad, all of their skin is gone.”
“Exactly, boy. We are all the same on the inside.”
Pretty radical for a conservative Shriner with an administrative job on the railroad, don’t you think?
Dad had learned hate, but he didn’t teach it. He rejected it. Therefore, I have no hate, so it stops with my generation.
That’s what I call Parenting 101.