Yesterday’s blog post, The First Black Whatever,  really pinched a few nerves. I’m not surprised. Race is one of the most sensitive subjects in America. And perhaps the most important. The portion of my post that stirred the kettle was a suggestion of subtle and sometimes overt racism exhibited by a lot of folks involved in the Tea Party movement. I was accused of race-baiting in comments that ranged from “Democrats do it” to “What difference does it make the color they (the tea partiers) are?” Indeed, there were even Google searches of Tea Party demonstrations to find a black face in the sea of white and prove me wrong. Sure enough, one was found.

Let me be clear, I don’t know shit about what it is like to be an African-American in this country, which is the case with most so-called enlightened white liberals. One has to be black, to live black and have the experiences of blacks to understand what it is like. Over the years, I’ve had opportunities to learn just a little bit about the black experience. Most recently, I attended a six week Racial Dialogue workshop in Baton Rouge. It taught me again how much I don’t know. Learning anything requires willingness. The point of my essays is to share experiences have made me the person Readers who don’t care can tune out, or take me to task when they disagree. I have thick skin and a sense of humor that allows me to laugh while standing at fresh graves.

Excerpts from Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger provides insight into the early lessons I learned about race and I pass my perceptions along free of charge. Apologies about my repetiveness to those who read the book.

Like a majority of native born Southerners, I grew up in a family that used the “N” word. My parents denied being bigots. They just wanted “blacks to stay in their place.” I have a lasting memory of daddy’s reaction following my encounter with baseball star, Jackie Robinson.

I was thirteen years old and working as “roof boy” for the minor league Mobile Bears. The job entailed retrieving foul balls that landed on top of the grandstand. A screen at the rear of the roof prevented the balls from going into the parking lot. Before and after games, I ran errands for players and was paid fifty cents a night, plus tips, to watch baseball and spend time around professional athletes. It was great.

On trips north from Florida spring training in those days, major league teams played exhibitions against minor league farm clubs. The Bears were affiliated with the old Brooklyn Dodgers. And when the team bus arrived at Mobile’s Hartwell Field in 1949, I helped the Major League’s first black player carry his equipment bag to the clubhouse. Daddy was not impressed. “Hey, Marie,” he called to mother. “Come and listen to Johnny brag about carrying a nigger’s suitcase.”  It was supposed to be a joke―a symptom of culturally ingrained Southern prejudices. In dad’s defense, when I took up the civil rights banner years later, he bragged to friends about my support of the cause.

It is important to know that in later years my dad was later willing to re-consider ever so slightly the racial attitudes that were part of his upbringing. To me, that is a key to gaining knowledge and growing spiritually. Yes, I said spiritual. Read the New Testament. 

As I wrote yesterday, the only radio station willing to hire me after I plugged the jug in 1971 was Baton Rouge’s black programmed station, WXOK. Before getting fired by the city’s most prestigious station for being a drunk I was a talk show host for three years—a liberal voice of sorts during a time of racial discord in Louisiana. I thought I knew some stuff.  After all, I was the first airman in my barracks on Okinawa in 1954 to choose a black roommate. But after listening to African-American guests on my talk show, I began to recognize that I knew so litte about the black experience.

It didn’t take me long at WXOK to realize that my “enlightened” understanding of discrimination was superficial at best. I had never been the victim of blatant bigotry. Nor had I experienced the humiliation of being turned away from a segregated school, public facility, or denied a job because of my skin color. Working at WXOK taught me lessons that I could only learn in predominately African-American surroundings.

But despite a self-proclaimed empathy for those deprived of the American dream, I was a phony. My outsized ego had been severely damaged by the tumble from News Director, ace reporter and talk show host at Baton Rouge’s leading radio station to my job as WXOK’s token white boy. Instead of feeling gratitude for a career reprieve, I began fabricating an excuse for my presence at the station. I would tell former colleagues that the job was an assertion of my commitment to civil rights―foisting myself off as a self-sacrificing Peace Corps journalist.

The opportunity to promulgate the fiction presented itself at an NAACP news conference. For the first time since my failed attempt to succeed as a skid row bum, I was about to come face-to-face with reporters I had avoided since my day of reckoning. The prospect of seeing them at a Baton Rouge hotel was so unnerving that I sat in the parking lot for several minutes summoning up the courage to go inside. Entering the lobby, I immediately ran into Louisiana’s United Press bureau chief, Charles Layton. He greeted me with a smile and a handshake.

“Where have you been, John?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you for awhile.” My answer was so stunning I thought it was the voice of another person. “WJBO fired me for being a drunk,” I blurted out. “I’m working at WXOK, trying to get things back together.”

Had I actually made this humbling admission to someone? I could not believe my own words. Charlie took the sting out of my confession. “That’s great. I knew you were having problems. I hope things work out.” It was no big deal to him. Like most other reporters, he knew about my drinking. 

So there it is—a combination of claiming to have knowledge of the black experience, fooling myself into believing I understood racism from the perspective of African-Americans, and a dose of attempted hypocrisy in trying to conceal my embarrassment I felt of being relegated to an all black environment—even though ten months at WXOK saved my career and very possibly, my life.

I admit my shortcomings when it comes to underlying prejudices. But I continue to have a willingness to acknowledge my ignorance. It is a step toward brotherhood.

Am I hokey, or what?