Vocal Point: Over years, world has changed for all

The words hung in the air like a repugnant, noxious gas. Out of the blue, casual conversation turned into a repulsive discourse, replete with prejudice. An unhappy encounter with another race was described in words like “lazy,” “entitled,” “rude,” and tragically, the word “all.”

All women park their cart on one side of the aisle and stand on the other side of the aisle while shopping. All teenagers take drugs and party hearty. Africans breed AIDS.

The words gave me pause, and a softly spoken, “I don’t think the word all applies here,” now seems like a freshman debater’s poor reply to such a serious issue. Here it is 2007, more than 40 years from the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and racial intolerance is still snaking around in our Spokane grass.

Spokane, a true Wonder Bread city, is a rookie in the racial experience field. There’s little diversity here, with the most likely mingling point being a tribe-run casino or the last place you grabbed some good Thai grub.

I grew up in a different world, back in Toledo. What started out as a Polish neighborhood quickly turned upside down after a phenomenon called “block busting” changed it, almost overnight, into a predominately black neighborhood. What I remember the most now about growing up in that neighborhood is that my parents didn’t change one bit – they had nothing bad to say about anybody. During this time, when unrest was spilling into Toledo fueled by the nearby Detroit race riots, this was no mean feat. But “peace on Earth, good will to men” was more than a seasonal saying in our house.

All cell phone users drive one-handed, with a cigarette in the other, endangering all of us on the highway. College kids are there for everything but the studying.

That neighborhood was one of the best things to ever happen to me. I met honorable people of color there – like Mr. Spencer, our black neighbor.

As the riots reached fever pitch, Mr. Spencer sat on his porch with a shotgun, saying, “Anybody who touches my house gets blown away. Anybody who touches Harding’s house gets blown away, too.” It was lawless but borne with a fervor for justice – black protecting white – that matched the madness running rampant.

Much later, when our family did move, the family who purchased our home was literally moving in as we loaded up to move. An elderly black woman read that family the riot act about letting us leave in dignity.

All blacks are superior basketball players. All whites can’t dance. Or jump. All Indians want handouts. All Hispanics take jobs from us “legals.”

I went into the military less than a month after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. I didn’t know what to think of him – I never met the man. But I know what I thought of Mr. Spencer, the honorable back man (and apparent independent thinker, he named his son “Adolph”), and others from the neighborhood, like the older teenager who boxed the ears of his brother after he pulled a knife on me.

That teenager gave me and a white teammate the 3-mile ride home and made his brother walk. King’s idea of equality for all seemed like stating the obvious to me.

All people from India want an IT job or a convenience store. All Muslims are terrorists.

In Spokane, you can raise a family, like I did, and have so little interracial interaction. For me, that’s not something to rejoice in. It’s more a sigh and an opportunity lost in preparing children for the world.

As I think of my youngest of 18 heading into the world now, I think of my world at 18 – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just killed, Bobby Kennedy laid low before I got out of basic, and the Vietnam War playing nightly on CBS.

There was no interracial dating. Movies like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” were groundbreaking along with a comedic, prejudicial ambassador named Archie Bunker.

Now I see a world, changed by hard-earned progress – sometimes at the price of blood and or imprisonment – but a world in significant degrees better than the one I stepped out into.

Maybe some of us had something to do with that, one good man or woman at a time – like Mr. Spencer, my parents, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and a rainbow of other colors.

For the “dinosaurs” living in past hates, your day, like misusing the word “all,” is over.