Every person has preferences that some other persons may interpret as prejudices. Our experience with the ugly prejudice found in the conflict of races, genders, status and the variant other identities of persons and positions distorts the contexts of our lives. There is a massive population that simply follows their preferences and that without prejudice so to find a practical way to live in a complex world that can eat up the time of life by fighting prejudice with carnal or negative feelings about each other. I had a student of African descent quite popular with other students, talented in body and personality, played football and proved an excellent speaker in my classes. He never assumed to take umbrage at any point about his race, even though he encountered events that were prejudicial. He met every negative event with forgiveness, and he actually felt sorry for persons who missed the advantage of sharing life experience with all persons regardless of their race, gender, physical competence, status – or whatever point we might make. He was always on the affirmative side of things. His wedding, which I attended, included every variety of persons one might define in common American culture. The ceremony was marked by indications of both a common wedding for Caucasian-Americans and Afro-Americans. It was a celebration. It was not to hide prejudice but to celebrate a wedding with persons. Eddie had the marvelous gift of life, strong enough to refuse to be put-down or detoured from personal objectives. When the opportunity arose, I asked that he be hired, not to make an opportunity for a minority person, or to counter any accusation that we did not have a sufficient number of minorities on our staff, but because he had what I hoped other students and staff might gain, the affirmation of self and application to life’s work. He once wrote a published article about how much that meant to him. He earned it in the cultivation of self-maturity, and Christian concepts.
Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, educated, rich – and all related to the American opportunity for all persons – admitted to virtually hating all white persons in his early days of adulthood. I have met such persons from his race and mine who turn slights into causes, who may not be able to tell that which is prejudicial from that which simply relates to the course of a conditioned life. Conditioning is a heavy burden in itself without having an additional load given to it. All persons need to escape that hole that swallows up so much talent and time. Those persons of whatever race ought to give up enticements they offer to prejudice – playing a game that assures losing. If instead of fomenting hatred, they were to offer ways of shedding history’s suffocating blanket, the solutions of equality would come faster. Of course it takes time, but solution is possible – if we follow the pattern Christ offers for human solution – forgiveness/love. I went to a university to recruit two persons for our faculty. I presented our requirements for the person in charge asking also that I talk first to candidates who might fit our profile. To have such persons would elevate our general situation. I wanted to unite our college need with a social effort to balance out ethnic imbalance. The first fellow let me know that he expected more than our entrance salary, that one of his goals was to try to gain recompense for what his great-grandfather had suffered under slavery, and he was not really concerned about my needs to be faithful to my institution in cultivating excellence for the faculty. Others had similar attitudes. Christian values were out of their purview. I returned to my desk having hired no one on that trip. I looked elsewhere. I asked Eddie.
If time and skill were given to me I would study the ill treatment of minority races by the majority, of the strong against the weak in power contexts and other contexts as well. It seems to me that the Jews have been somewhat forgiving, or at least trying to give up on violence and hatred as cultural weapons, as have Americans from Japanese, Chinese, Irish, German, and Spanish speaking peoples. There are significant possibilities available to current generations if we were to approach the problems of society not through the lens of the negatives of history, but affirmations of human beings for freedom. I believe the majority in society would support such a scenario, and all persons would benefit in the progression. We seem to miss the dignity of Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr. – or Jesus and the Apostles. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020