As you may have noticed by many of my posts, I am interested in race relations in America. I always have been.
In our current era, if one listens to the nightly news, one would believe that we are presently in the midst of a terrible racial crisis, that the races are at each others throats.
I'm reminded of an apocryphal story about an old man sitting at the gates of his city. One day, the man was approached by a traveler and asked about the kind of people he should expect to find in the city.
The old man asked, "What are the people like where you come from?"
The traveler replied, "Oh, the people where I come from are wonderful. They are kind and generous and understanding."
The old man said, "You shall find the same kind of people here in my town."
A bit later, another traveler arrived at the gate and asked the same question of the old man, whereupon the old man asked the new traveler the same question, "What are the people like where you come from?"
The second traveler replied, "You'd just not believe how terrible they are. They're rude, they cheat whenever they get the chance, and they're stingy."
To which the old man said, "You shall find the same kind of people here in my town."
I have noticed that one sees what one wants to see. I've also noticed that, as humans, we tend to personalize things to an unhealthy degree. It's not unheard of for me to receive poor customer service of one sort or another. Sometimes it's from a white employee, sometimes from a black one. It's easy, because I'm white, to attribute poor service from an employee who happens to be black to a racial bias. It may be easy, but it's not healthy. More likely, they're just having a bad day, or, perhaps, they are just cranky all the time. The likelihood that they care about me or my skin color is pretty low.
But, more often than not, I receive good customer service from blacks and whites alike. They are generally cheerful and helpful no matter what their race. All, whether black or white, are almost universally happy when I greet them cheerfully, and, if the mood strikes, with a joke of some sort. We share a moment of humanity then go our own ways to meet our next task.
And, sometimes, we meet the extraordinary human. Last week, as I pulled onto the highway after leaving work, I immediately noticed that my front tire was flat. Never a good sign.
I pulled over and got busy changing the tire. After about fifteen minutes of struggling with the broken mechanism which lifts the tire to its storage port under the bed of my truck, a man pulled up next to me and got out with an offer to help. He saw the problem immediately because the same thing had happened with his truck last year. He crawled under the bed and fixed the problem in short order. He then stayed and helped my change the tire.
The whole time we chatted and enjoyed one anothers company and I felt as though I had met a kindred spirit. He is someone who shares my view of man.
It shouldn't be noteworthy that he is a black man, but in today's climate, it's worth noting. Honestly, it doesn't impress me that he is black because I think that humans are humans. Some humans are kind of icky and creepy, and some humans are wonderful.
So, on a random weekday, in a random town in the deep south, a grouchy middle-aged white guy was blessed by a cheerful middle-aged (though somewhat younger) black guy.
That is the America that I see.
The America that I know.
The America that I love.
God Bless America.
TheCurmudgeon
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