I think moments in my memory I can say changed my mind was witnessing racial discrimination up close and personal. I saw I saw two white guys beat the hell out of a black guy and no one tried to stop them. I was alone so I felt helpless. I was fifteen. He was the father of my friend. I went home and told my father and my father and uncle, Nick, Mike, Mary, and Vic’s father found him in the alley dead. Man I was broken and it pissed my dad off. They went after the two guys that killed him and the died as well. I didn’t see it but Carm did. I cried with my friend and his brothers and sisters. Dad paid off their house and uncle Al got them a car. I still talk to my friend. He works with me and from time to time we have a moment of sadness because his dad was awesome. I realized that racism is ugly and I wanted no part of it. My dad told me…we weren’t white and it could easily have been one of us. He told me to never forget that. He told me there were parts of the country I wasn’t safe visiting. My last name ended with a vowel and they called us waps, degos, and white niggers. I looked at Carm and he nodded. I learned that if we turned away from it, even if all the blacks left, all the Hispanics, all the Asians, whose next in line, us. I was forever changed and my white friends became associates who I fed with a long handle spoon.
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