The Story of Prejudice | Michael Coren | CWR
For all of the real failures of individual Catholics, the Church itself has always been color-blind
I
must have been eight or nine-years-old at the time. I had been
playing soccer in the local park with some boys my age, and as well
as my friends there were some children we’d not seen before. In
that pitch-perfect music of innocent childhood we didn’t care or
judge, but just played and had fun.
At the end of the day, one of my new friends asked me if I wanted to come back to his home for a drink and cookies or something like that. Off we went. We laughed, chatted, played. Delightful. Then the boy’s dad came home and started to ask questions that I didn’t fully understand. He then became loud and angry, and my friend was suddenly sad and frightened. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave” he said. None of it meant anything to me, and I simply left.
Memory is a funny thing. It was only years later that I realized what had actually gone on that day, and I’m still not sure why I submerged it all. The father had shouted, “Is he a Jew; is he a Jew?” The boy had not known what a Jew was, but his dad certainly did. The father had gotten progressively more angry, and then I had to leave. Actually I have three Jewish grandparents and my mother’s mother wasn’t Jewish, so I’m not quite the real thing. Perhaps I should have asked the old Nazi if I could have stayed for a quarter of the arranged time!
I mention this because of the recent Zimmerman trial and verdict. I suppose that few, if any, white people can fully comprehend and appreciate the nature and pain of racism, and I won't claim for a heartbeat that I can in any way empathize with the black experience.
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