Cross posted from www.SavagePolitics.com

I ordered my 'typical white person' t-shirt today. Something I never saw myself doing  when I first  set out on that road I walked for decades in behalf of civil rights. And my Dad, if he were still living, would find it ironical. The hours I spent confronting him over his use of the `n' word made for some lively discussions around our kitchen table. This Formica oblong on chrome legs sat in a street-facing window in our apartment on Norton Avenue in Lynwood, California, the white person's Compton. It was there I learned that Vincent Lawrence, an Irish river rat on Manhattan's lower east side, had been taught to say nigger along with his oatmeal. But the truly amazing thing about my Dad's use of this word, was the way he unlearned it the day the hearse carrying the body of John F. Kennedy rolled across the nation's tv screens. Not long after this my father stood up for civil rights at great personal sacrifice. And although I had already left home, my Dad became my personal hero.

I think in order to appreciate the sacrifice involved in my Father's stand for racial equality, you need to understand that my Father never finished grade school-- although he was bright and understood more from reading the daily newspaper than all my professors at Berkeley.  But my Dad had worked most of my childhood as a guard at General Motors on the night shift. It was there, after I left home, that he studied by correspondence course to take the California State Real Estate License Exam. After he passed, he worked part time in the office of an acquaintance; and then he did well enough after a couple of years  to open his own office. My Mom left the factory she worked in and joined him as an agent. Success greeted their endeavors. They moved to a `ritzy' part of town, bought a house with a shake roof and hung out with a doctor and his wife, and  a business tycoon and his wife. As far as the Farley's were concerned, everything was clover.

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