My dad was a good guy. He never set out to hurt anything. I never heard him speak ill of anyone. He was also a Jewish man and I always just assumed that he had witnessed enough anti-semitism, racism and gender inequality in his time to see the silliness in it all.... peoples need for otherness. A need that says I may not be great but Im better than him, her or them.... the other. Usually, the weaker folks feel about themselves the greater the need for the other. Unless you were the other. In those cases you were hip to it all, had faced the stiff jawed icey look of false superiority, fought it, bore it or silently withdrew in a peaceful warrior mode that saved itself for another time.

My dad was a good guy, quiet and thoughtful. He knew better. I always just assumed that he came down on the side of judging a man or woman by the color of their character, not their skin. I always just assumed....

One day driving through town, dad spotted a black man and white woman walking down the street together, obviously and by their body language a couple. Dad saw me see him see them. He glanced over and said Black and White Cookie* and that was the end of it. But in that one moment, that one glance and those four words I knew that my assumptions about him were wrong. There was a mocking disapproval in dads look and voice that let me know he too needed the concept of the other to make him feel bigger, better and more powerful.