I happened to be watching the election results when a friend of mine came over. He looks a lot more like the new President than I do. He was not born here but he has lived here all his life. He shares a similar heritage with Obama. We were watching and talking and drinking and laughing and we blinked and all of a sudden we had a new president. A black one. We are honest with each other, my friend and I. We embrace our differences. I asked aloud which of us should be more proud. Should I feel as proud as he, he as me or should we be proud as humans or perhaps as humans as well. Did he, as a non-voting random-black-guy sharing this moment with us, feel the same enormity of moment as my neighbor who lives here and voted.

Follow up:

We decided that there was plenty of proud to go around and he did, indeed, as a black person, feel a special sense of pride even though he aint from around here. I watched him talk about it. Looking back, counting heroes and atrocities down through the years and getting to the moment with such a look of wonder. This wide-eyed astonishment as if he didn’t think it would ever happen. Not in his lifetime. He was holding out hope for his kid’s generation.

We raised a glass or two and talked about racism. I asked him if he feels it still. I asked if in his everyday life he still felt different. His reply struck a common chord that resonated down deep. He said that it was such a part of his young life that he could forget about it living where we do. We live in a multi-cultural cornerstone town. A town between cultural pockets. The town that gets the blend. Then he said that now and then it is just too much to ignore. He recounted a recent event.

He was set to have a business meeting with a client who had invited him for a beer at the VFW hall. He was early. He walked up and hit the buzzer on the members only door. Someone opened it and he told them he was meeting a member and they let him in. He entered and came around the corner and into the bar proper. He said to me it was like out of a bad movie. This room full of older white vets and their wives and sons turned as one and stared at him without a word. The disdain palpable in the air. The chill in the air, the music happened to stop, the silence in the room deafening. He turned and walked out without a word. I was ashamed of my people, my townmates, people that touch my food and fix my car and teach our kids at school. Average locals who still had distrust of my friend because of the color he is. He never uttered a word in their presence. How could they feel that way still after all these years.

It struck a common chord. I have had the exact same experience. Only it was because I look like I do. I walked into a VFW lodge one day many years ago with long hair and a beard, barefoot with torn jeans, an old workshirt and a guitar. I felt the same chill go up my spine that he did.

I was born in a time and place where black folks were plentiful and angry. For a while we had our very own black person, well to be fair we were accused of having one. The truth was my single mom needed help and she hired a single mom to help. Lilly Ruth Gould - only when she said it it was Lillyroofgoul all one word. She was my black mamma. She lived with us when we lived in a house in the burbs. She got us ready for school, made our lunches, cleaned the house, made dinner and made sure we did our homework. She was more mom than my mom all day til mom came home from work. Big laugh, big heart and she was sure to tell you if you didn’t notice she had a bigblackbooty and bigotitties. First bigotitties I ever saw “nekkid.” They were huge and out there and she would hit you with them if you were bad and knock you over. I grew up with her and my little black sister for a couple of years until we couldn’t afford it and we moved to the slums. Lillyroofgoul was set free and my olblackmama and my lil sista disappeared into America.

I spent summers at my grandmother’s summer house in upstate NY. In the summer my Jewish relatives with numbers tattooed on their arms would tell these horrendous war stories at our annual BBQ. It was like part of the festivities. We’d cook hotdogs on the Weber and swim in the lake, row a boat with a straw hat on and then eat corn on the cob and watermelon while the uncles talked. We had to listen, all the kids, so we would never forget. Ripped from their homes, they told us with relish, trucked like cattle and stuffed into trains, blindfolded, raped, beaten, bitten, starved and tortured, thirsty and naked, branded and led time and time again to the brink of death. Teased with it until they begged for it. The women cried and the men looked wistful as they remembered and told of brothers and mothers, grandfathers and wives electrocuted or gassed. Close relatives of these relatives of mine died horribly during the holocaust. So close they could still remember the looks on the faces. So real in their mind they could still see the images when they closed their eyes. They all unconsciously stroked the numbers inked on their arms. I asked one once if I could touch it. Then we had ice cream and cake and the kids played on the swings while the adults played cards at the big table.

We wintered in a predominantly black, poor side of town neighborhood on the coast of New York. A pasty white boy in the Jew building among the pockets of Puerto Ricans, Armenians, Chinese, Cubans and black folks from several countries. For some reason we hated each other. We banded together to protect ourselves and that made it worse. Not interacting but staying among our own. Trapped together by economics and family tradition we fought over scraps and shared the feeling that things should be different. We were promised change and things changed.

The day MLK was shot we were kept home from school. The kids that went were terrified. Angry black people were out in the streets. They threw a white kid out of the second floor of my school. Friends of mine were beaten and robbed. Stores were closed and looted and burned. It was scary for my people. We were afraid. We learned how to hate. Again. We felt indignant that they thought we were racist. Us Jews with our history of suffering. I have heard heated arguments as a mixed group of adults tried to out-atrocity each other. Practically sticking out their tongues and saying, “they hate us more than they hate you.”

I found myself in the middle. My black friends were angry at white people. Schoolmates were looting stores of people that lived in my building. It was a confusing time of life. It was a long time before I learned that we were all the same. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it. Listening to late night radio talk show I heard a black man call in and talk about how it feels. It was honest and raw and true and it changed my life. The conversation he had with the white guy host changed me. They came to some understanding as did I.

When I got married I moved to rural Illinois. A city boy with club shirts and platform shoes. Soon after moving there I returned to my hippie roots. There wasn’t a disco for miles. I let my hair grow and grew a beard and had a band and played guitar. Smoked pot and laughed loud and rednecks for miles around knew who I was. I heard they were looking for a guitar player at the VFW Hall. I walked in that door and it might as well have been 1955 and I some black trumpet player with a porkpie hat and a hand-rolled cigarette. This was a whites-only bar and all of a sudden I wasn’t white anymore. It was frightening. I’m a big guy. Nearly as tall as the doorway I stood in. I stood there and two guys at the bar stood up. The bartender picked up the phone. There was no doubt in my mind he saw a fight and was calling the cops already. I shook my head turned and walked out. I was stunned. It got to me.

At another time in my life I ventured to The Apollo Theater to see B.B.King in concert. My brother, my girlfriend and I were the only white faces. Second row center, right in front of him. He seemed surprised to see me. It was a great show and we were welcomed by all around us. At the end of the show he reached forward and tried to hand me the pick he was playing with. Smiling eye to eye, he seemed pleased we were there. A young lady in the seat in front of me jumped up and, misunderstanding, she grabbed the pick. While she jumped up and down and showed her friends he looked at me again and gave a look around me and smiled and gave me a little wink and a shrug. I let it go. It was better that way. In this place I was the only hippie and I was welcomed home. They shook my hand, we bopped together to the music. We shared an evening. I was frightened to fight over the pick however I felt totally welcomed to the show. When I stood up to leave and turned around to see the sea of black faces, the smiles lit up, laughing and pointing us out like, “ohhh look! White people.”

Sitting there, my friend and I watching the speech, he said to me in his best stereotype black guy voice “whatchoo gotsta be proud of cracka?”

I said, “I am proud of you. You persevered, you worked hard and you gained respect, you gained rights and you took advantage of the opportunities they bring. You changed the world.” I said, “I’m proud of the white folks that stood up and said ‘enough is enough.’ I am proud that we learned how to see people for who they are and we did it in time for my children to be part of it, to understand it. “I’m proud of the humans that have learned and grown and made history. The history we share is full of wrong and we should be ashamed, we should all be ashamed. Now we can be proud again. Proud of who we are. Proud of what we are doing around the world. Proud of our quest for freedom and equality. Proud of our kids for making up their own minds. They voted. You can’t keep good from happening; you can only encourage it or delay it.”

I didn’t vote. For reasons of my own I have never voted.