What I’ve Been Missing

My father never joined the Klan. And Neo-Nazis would have disgusted him. He didn’t serve in WWII to see Americans goose-stepping down Main Street waving swastikas.

And yet, my father was an unapologetic racist.

In his mind, blacks were simply inferior to whites. This was for him a fact of nature. The sun rises in the east. Leaves change colors in the fall. Whites are superior to blacks.

So he felt secure in his belief that whites should inhabit a higher social, economic, and political position than blacks.

As long as blacks showed the expected level of deference, he condescended in a genteel way. He restricted his use of the n-word to conversations with whites. He eventually learned that some whites—like me—would be offended by the word and watched his tongue more carefully in some circles.

Well, actually, around me he continued to use the n-word to get under my…