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The Jews Killed Jesus

August 02, 2007 | Category: Family, It's a Trip



"So the Jews killed Jesus?" some kids asked in my white-bread Connecticut Sunday school.

"That's right," the teacher said.

And so my first indoctrination into the inheritance of prejudice was made. With a simple sentence, and no blurry soft innuendo.

It was a bald statement of why Jews.Are.Bad.

And it didn't take graduating the 17th grade with a Theology minor on top of 5 years as a chaplain to realize that my pastor with the rosy cheeks and rumbly sense of humor was teaching us kids to condemn.

I knew it right then.

At 13.

Although I didn't have the courage to speak up, just the cowardice to silently disagree.

And it was sheer luck of the heart and my family that I knew better.

I mean, no one runs around dousing a pan of flaming saganaki shouting "the Greeks killed Socrates!"

And what that pastor was saying seemed just as.... off.

Now of course I know it's much worse.

My parents worked hard to raise me without prejudice, which is an amazing feat in New England. Because that bastion of Abolitionism has the demographics of Wonder Bread, fought integration right up into the 1980's, and features a basketball team that, don't forget, found the one white guy in America who could jump.

I wanted to do more than that for Bear.

My point, and I do have one, is that this is the one great fear CD and I have about moving back to the East Coast (if that's what we end up doing... and it is certainly looking that way.)

We chose the Oak Park area precisely because of its wide mix of population.
It put him with a rainbow of other kids: ones whose Mommies wear veils, ones whose skin is different color from his, ones that have two daddies...

This area is by no means perfect, but it was the best we could find with our priorities.

Yes, kids (and adults) will be mean, and segregate, and clique up. It's a Lord of the Flies world, still.

But at least he SEES the rainbow world around him. Just being on a t-ball team that looks like a United Nations conference is, in and of itself, a powerful teacher.

Yet now, at the tender age of 6, we are packing boxes. We are counting fondue forks and donating some of the zabillion odd spoons we've found. We are looking online at towns and neighborhoods.

"What will it be like?" Bear asks, carefully separating the packing paper in a pile for me.

'White!' I want to scream. "You've been there," I remind him. "On vacation..."

My husband sees my distress and tries to comfort me. "You and I ended up OK," CD reminds me, his lips in my hair. "And we grew up practically in gallon jugs of white milk."

I sigh, and nod. "But we had overcome so much programming. When I think back to all the stupid stuff I used to carry around in my brain. And the assumptions I made..." I blush, even now, in shame. "If I'd married Darnell, the cab driver from Zimbabwe, this would be a whole 'nother issue."

"Didn't he want to take you back with him to meet his other wives?" CD reminds me.

"Details," I scoff, holding him tight. Instead I married this Icelander, and we built this life together....

With this child. Who will of course be exposed to all kinds of intolerance in his life. There never really was any way to avoid it.

But the little voice inside me says it will be harder now. Maybe this my own prejudice, wouldn't that be funny?, but this is what I am afraid of in moving back where I was once told that the Jews killed Jesus.

[CD would like to add that a) Yes, the strange and not-so-lovely 'Bunker for Christ' people also live in this area so let's not pretend it's nirvana, b) That prejudice lurks even in the seemingly most integrated communities, maybe is being taught right this minute at a Sunday School near us, and that it's our job as parents to teach differently, and c) That he strongly doubts his wife meant ANY slur at all (to which I heartily agree but reminded him that it just wasn't OK then or now to teach kids to condemn, wholesale, an entire faith population.)]


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Tagged: prejudice, jew, new_england, moving, fear, christian, hate Corporate, Mommy, Life
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Comments


Like Kathy I grew up in a very VERY non-diverse area and I think never became prejudiced because there was simply never anyone to learn to be prejudiced against. I guess you just can't learn the attitudes or the names if you never hear them. Maybe that sounds weird but I came to the big city at 17 never having met anyone who wasn't white and I had no idea that there was any such thing as racism. It was a HUGE shock and completley outrageous to me the first time I heard someone swearing at an Asian person because of their race - it was totally inconceivable that anyone thought it was OK to talk like that.

My husband (who was raised in outback Australia and barely met any non-family members until he was 16) and I now have dinner parties that look like a United Nations meeting but at the end of the day we are friends with these people because they are great people - not because we are "being tolerant" if you know what I mean. Some of our friends say that sometimes being pandered to can be as bad as being discriminated against.

Just wanted to give you another take on the effects of being raised in a culturally non-diverse area.

Posted by: flikka on August 7, 2007 06:03 PM


I grew up in an area that was about as diverse as a KKK meeting. Their attitudes weren't that far off either. I now live in a central Indiana area that is about as white bread as you get. Yet, I am very tolerant, belong to a GBLT friendly chorus, am very spiritual, but not Christian and my husband and I seem to be the only people with Democratic leanings in the whole county. My kids accept these views as acceptable. Now that's not saying that they don't come home from school with a few interesting ideas from time to time, but these provide an opening for discussion. I'm not saying it is/was easy. For the first few years after I moved here I felt like a lonely fish out of water. But then I met one...two... and eventually a large group of people I could fit in with and provided the diversity I so craved. You will be fine and so will Bear. He will follow your and CD's example. That, building on the foundation you have already laid, will produce the tolerance you are already fostering. I actually think you might want to worry about what will your answer be when he asks "Why aren't there any(or more) black/Indian/Asian/etc people living here?"

Posted by: Cathy on August 3, 2007 01:55 PM


Some practical advice from a life-long East Coast/Mid-Atlantic/Southern resident:

Look for a community that is in a town with a large, land-grant university. Big schools have very diverse populations of students and professors. The surrounding towns or cities can be an oasis of diversity in otherwise homogenous surroundings. Property values may be a bit higher in the actual town, but it's worth it to have a multicultural school system.

Don't be put off by the actual population of the town or city, instead, look at the makeup of the professors on a faculty...their kids go to school somewhere, their families shop for groceries somewhere, they play in playgrounds and enjoy the parks in town.

My county is 99% caucasian and the town I work in and that my kids attend school in is about 70% white. Because of the university, we are able to find friends and form relationships with families from all corners of the globe. I grew up in a lily-white southern town but both my parents were professors at the university and our house was the gathering place for a very large international community. Fun and good, good food.

And Marketing Mommy is right; bigotry is everywhere. Teaching our kids to recognize, hell, recognizing it in ourselves, is a life long job.

Posted by: paige on August 3, 2007 09:14 AM


CD is wonderfully sensible. Not that you aren't, my friend.

Posted by: rp on August 3, 2007 08:15 AM


Prejudice is everywhere. Even in some surprising places. I chose to live in Oak Park because it reminded me of my hometown, the diverse, left-leaning Arlington, VA. Yet even there my 12th grade AP English teacher, an African-American Baptist, told me "I know you can't help it, but your people killed Jesus."

Posted by: Marketing Mommy on August 2, 2007 08:24 PM