Jim Busch: Bigotry can be hard to maintain

The news today is full of stories about white supremacy groups like the Proud Boys and the Ku Klux Klan. These groups are increasingly common as racial tensions mount. I detest these groups and their evil ideology, but I can understand them because I am descended from a long line of racists. I am not proud of my family history of bigotry, but I am proud that we’ve risen above this misguided way of thinking.

My maternal grandfather’s family were Scots-Irish pioneers. Their racist roots of the Scots-Irish run deep in this country. The British settled the Scots-Irish along the frontier where they would protect their coastal settlements from marauding native tribes. Essentially, they came to this country to facilitate the genocide of Native Americans.

These Presbyterian Scots-Irish didn’t welcome the immigrants who followed them to America. They saw the mostly Catholic people from Ireland and southern Europe as a threat to their livelihood and to the “purity of the race.” When the Ku Klux Klan began actively recruiting in the North, my great-uncles happily put on white hoods and robes to burn crosses on the hilltops above the valley’s mill towns.

I never met any of my great-uncles because they disowned my grandfather. He committed the sin of falling in love with an Irish Catholic girl. My grandmother insisted that he adopt her Catholic faith, so his brothers never spoke to him again. My grandfather never talked about his brothers; it was too painful for him. I only learned of my family’s deep dark racist secret from my great-aunt Fannie.

My dad’s family came from one of the groups that my great-uncles welcomed with burning crosses. They came to the U.S. early in the 20th century from Catholic southern Germany. His older brothers taught my dad who to hate, so he grew up to be stridently racist and anti-Semitic.

Growing up, I heard my dad use every known racial slur for Black people. He characterized them as lazy, untrustworthy and stupid. I was puzzled by my dad’s friendship with a Black neighbor. My dad was always nice to Mr. Johnson and would inquire about his family. I asked my dad about this and he told me about how the Johnsons were the only ones who showed up with baskets of food when my grandfather died. My dad said, “The Johnsons are good folks, they ain’t like the rest of the (insert nasty word here).”

My dad was always talking about the “Jews.” My dad was convinced that Jewish bankers were responsible for all the ills of the world. He bought into all the lies spread by prominent anti-Semites like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh.

Again, my dad’s choice of friends confused me. One of his closest friends was Abe Simon. Like my dad, Mr. Simon worked a steady second shift as a machinist for Westinghouse. Mr. Simon grew up in a Reform synagogue while Mrs. Simon was a strict Orthodox Jew. She kept a strict kosher home. Mr. Simon loved her but he also loved bacon and eggs. Every so often he would show up at our house with a paper grocery bag filled with a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon, a clean shirt and Binaca, an aerosol breath freshener. My mother would cook the bacon and fry the eggs in the grease.

My dad and Mr. Simon would sit at our kitchen table eating bacon and eggs and talking about sports, politics and work. After lunch, Mr. Simon would wash up, change his shirt, give the dirty one to my mother to wash and then spray his mouth with the Binaca so no telltale aroma of bacon lingered on his person. He told my mother, “I’d be in less trouble with my missus if I came home with lipstick on my collar than bacon on my breath.”

I asked my dad how he could be friends with Mr. Simon, I got an answer much like the one I got when I asked about Mr. Johnson. “Oh, Abe’s not like the rest of the (insert nasty epithet for Jewish people). He’s a working guy like me. You can trust him, he’s one of the good ones.”

Despite my dad’s influence, I didn’t grow up to be a racist. My mother was a supporter of Martin Luther King Jr., and she taught me that “people are people, no matter what color they are.” Coming of age in the “Age of Aquarius” also helped me absorb the egalitarian views of the counterculture.

My dad’s friendships with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Simon taught me that prejudices are hard to maintain when you get to know the people you’re “supposed to hate.” It is much easier to hate a faceless group than to hate someone you actually know.

I think this is why despite the efforts of groups like the Proud Boys, racism is gradually disappearing. Our culture is changing; we are more likely to come into contact with people of different races and backgrounds. Racism may have survived the Civil War, it may be able to resist well-meaning legislation, but as my dad found out, bigotry can’t survive simply getting to know one another.

Jim Busch is McKeesport Community Newsroom writer for the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University.