1. The N-Word. I really do not think I have ever been racist. (I did have prejudices against people I deemed to be weak, quitters, obese. … On the other hand the reality is that [most] all of us have some tribalism and racism [various other prejudices]–at a minimum subtly “warped” into us.) … Herein I’m sadly confessing to that racism. An example is that as a south Texas country boy I did have in my vernacular the n-word (n-shooter, n-rigged, n-chaser).
In 1972, African-American Andrew Brown who had studied at FAMU was my agriculture technician and farm advisor for my doctoral research into three insect herbivores, their natural enemies and agroecology. He was also a wonderful friend!
In a discussion about our boyhood escapades, I started talking about hunting with a slingshot. I suddenly came out with “n…..” and I stopped right there. … There was dead silence for what seemed like forever, and then we went on with our discussion.
That is the last time I used the n-word.
2. Jew. In 1990 while traveling with some leftists from the U.S. in Nicaragua courtesy of the Sandanistas, on the left side and middle of the bus where I was sitting I was bragging on how tight I am and how I had jewed down an unscrupulous businessman in Texas. A young scholar sitting in front of me, quickly turned around and forcefully said, “Paul, we don’t use ‘Jew’ in that derogatory manner any more.”
And that is the last time I did. (Moreover, I now call the succulent plant, purple heart … purple heart!)
3. Agnosticism. The first time I begin to question the religion I was getting from Mom, in catechism, and at Mass and the existence of God (vs. god, Good, gods, nature, dynamic homeostatic symbioses, …), was when in seventh-grade catechism my classmate Richard Guajardo (who also had Catholic/Protestant parents) began asking the nuns why was Catholicism more right than Protestantism? The lovely changes in the Catholic Church by John the 23rd and Vatican II increased my skepticism. Later it was anthropologist Marvin Harris, mythologist Joseph Campbell, and religious scholar Karen Armstrong who strengthened the questioning. (I do appreciate my friend Helene Tamarin’s term, ignostic, which posits that nothing that can be thought of that the word “God” or the words “Yahweh” and “Allah” could refer to.)
pbm
[ 7 Ss / VV->^^ ]
