Mr Uncle Leroy
All Star
White supremacy is a funny thing.
Not ha-ha funny. Too many incidents in the past weeks, months and years demonstrate that, when properly motivated and mixed with the right kinds of circumstance — poverty, resentment and diminished life prospects — those who cotton to extremist beliefs are capable of doing great harm. But villains too easily understood make it harder to get our hands on fixing what’s clearly broken.
Funny then, that I found myself grasping for this understanding in 1973.
My father had just moved to a new neighborhood in Maryland when I came to visit. I was 11 years old, and David was the first kid that I met in the neighborhood: He glommed on to me and we became friends. One day at his house, everyone was freaked. Nervous. And tense. David whispered with his mother and they suggested that maybe it was time for me to head home for dinner.
“Well, my stepmom usually calls me when it’s ready,” I replied, not moving. I was largely a stranger to “hints.”
… a neighborhood that hated him, and whose hatred he returned.
Their panic increased, and as we played in his backyard, I watched David freeze and then look up at the sky. Or God. And on the balcony, above the yard where we played, I saw his father screaming. I couldn’t hear what he was screaming, but he was angry. Being a New York kid, I screamed back, “WHAT?!?!”
David nearly passed out, saying, as he sat down, defeated and broken by what I didn’t know, “You have to go now. Really.”
When I got home, my father asked if I’d had a good time, and I said that I had, and recounted the curious story.
“Hmm,” my father mused. “Maybe that was because David’s father is the head of the local KKK chapter.”
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Even then, I knew very well what this meant. My father explained himself: “You two seemed to like each other, and the truth is: No one is born a racist. So maybe whatever happened to his father to make him that way won’t happen to the son to make him that way. Because of you.”
Before drawing me into their orbit, the rest of the kids in the neighborhood — the sons and daughters of engineers, politicians, symphony directors and baseball players for the Washington Senators — mocked me for not knowing who David’s father was and why they all avoided him. David and I didn’t stay friends — not because I wouldn’t play with him anymore, because I would have, but because he couldn’t deal with the die that had been cast in a neighborhood that hated him, and whose hatred he returned.
Their whole ideology seemed to conceal lurking concerns about powerlessness, and was really a vehicle for getting a grip on their true love: worshipping at the cult of strength that underlies each and every far-right movement. These people all knew I was black, and even if I was what they would never call me to my face, “a mud person,” I also embodied the virtues and values they held dear: silent stoicism, a belief in the transformative powers of violence and the means to manifest it via my lifelong dedication to weightlifting and martial arts.
Where we differed was the presence of my middle-class “hopes” versus the absence of their belief in class possibilities.
Flashing forward to 2014: Bob Noxious is now dead, laid low by hepatitis. As for the other skinhead cats — some in and out of prison, some straight-worlding it as electricians, plumbers and cable TV installers, and many more struck dead by violence and disease — their stories are a forgotten part of our conversations about race in America.
Which is this: It’s inextricably connected to class. And poor lower classes — be they black, white or other — are forgotten much faster than their cousins who are disappearing into the middle class. And the more they’re forgotten, the less likely it is they’ll be remembered for anything other than the acting out that hits the headlines.
But — this understanding and proximity is not sympathy.
You see, this stuff actually comes from some place, and some place familiar, and treating it sooner rather than later might be better for us all in the long run. And as my father suggested once upon a time: No one comes out of the chute a bad actor.
Why a Skinhead Would Party with a Black Guy
Not ha-ha funny. Too many incidents in the past weeks, months and years demonstrate that, when properly motivated and mixed with the right kinds of circumstance — poverty, resentment and diminished life prospects — those who cotton to extremist beliefs are capable of doing great harm. But villains too easily understood make it harder to get our hands on fixing what’s clearly broken.
Funny then, that I found myself grasping for this understanding in 1973.
My father had just moved to a new neighborhood in Maryland when I came to visit. I was 11 years old, and David was the first kid that I met in the neighborhood: He glommed on to me and we became friends. One day at his house, everyone was freaked. Nervous. And tense. David whispered with his mother and they suggested that maybe it was time for me to head home for dinner.
“Well, my stepmom usually calls me when it’s ready,” I replied, not moving. I was largely a stranger to “hints.”
… a neighborhood that hated him, and whose hatred he returned.
Their panic increased, and as we played in his backyard, I watched David freeze and then look up at the sky. Or God. And on the balcony, above the yard where we played, I saw his father screaming. I couldn’t hear what he was screaming, but he was angry. Being a New York kid, I screamed back, “WHAT?!?!”
David nearly passed out, saying, as he sat down, defeated and broken by what I didn’t know, “You have to go now. Really.”
When I got home, my father asked if I’d had a good time, and I said that I had, and recounted the curious story.
“Hmm,” my father mused. “Maybe that was because David’s father is the head of the local KKK chapter.”
We'll introduce you to all the right people.
Rising stars, new trends and more. Get your daily brief & your eight must-reads delivered to your inbox every morning.
Even then, I knew very well what this meant. My father explained himself: “You two seemed to like each other, and the truth is: No one is born a racist. So maybe whatever happened to his father to make him that way won’t happen to the son to make him that way. Because of you.”
Before drawing me into their orbit, the rest of the kids in the neighborhood — the sons and daughters of engineers, politicians, symphony directors and baseball players for the Washington Senators — mocked me for not knowing who David’s father was and why they all avoided him. David and I didn’t stay friends — not because I wouldn’t play with him anymore, because I would have, but because he couldn’t deal with the die that had been cast in a neighborhood that hated him, and whose hatred he returned.
Their whole ideology seemed to conceal lurking concerns about powerlessness, and was really a vehicle for getting a grip on their true love: worshipping at the cult of strength that underlies each and every far-right movement. These people all knew I was black, and even if I was what they would never call me to my face, “a mud person,” I also embodied the virtues and values they held dear: silent stoicism, a belief in the transformative powers of violence and the means to manifest it via my lifelong dedication to weightlifting and martial arts.
Where we differed was the presence of my middle-class “hopes” versus the absence of their belief in class possibilities.
Flashing forward to 2014: Bob Noxious is now dead, laid low by hepatitis. As for the other skinhead cats — some in and out of prison, some straight-worlding it as electricians, plumbers and cable TV installers, and many more struck dead by violence and disease — their stories are a forgotten part of our conversations about race in America.
Which is this: It’s inextricably connected to class. And poor lower classes — be they black, white or other — are forgotten much faster than their cousins who are disappearing into the middle class. And the more they’re forgotten, the less likely it is they’ll be remembered for anything other than the acting out that hits the headlines.
But — this understanding and proximity is not sympathy.
You see, this stuff actually comes from some place, and some place familiar, and treating it sooner rather than later might be better for us all in the long run. And as my father suggested once upon a time: No one comes out of the chute a bad actor.
Why a Skinhead Would Party with a Black Guy
