My mother was determined that I would not grow up to be a racist. Given that I was born in 1950s Pittsburgh, that was a rather remarkable goal. Life along the three rivers was characterized by a marked de facto segregation, and there seemed to have been a high tolerance for racial slurs and humor, but that was never the case in our home. I knew from experience that my tongue and tonsils would have a memorable encounter with a bar of Dial soap if I even thought of repeating at home the jokes that I heard in school.
In the aftermath of the riots that gripped Pittsburgh in the late 1960s, my mother would take me with her door-to-door as she solicited pledges for the Bishop’s Annual Appeal. She considered it a great blessing when she would be spat upon, or the door slammed in her face, as fellow parishioners registered their opposition to the then-bishop’s message of racial reconciliation and the diocese’s financial support for programming benefiting the African American community. My mom was unflinching in her resolve. She could not have been happier when the color barrier was finally broken in our local parochial school, and she was thrilled to invite my first non-Caucasian classmate to our home for lemonade, just days after his arrival.
Archbishop Bernard Hebda
While some of my contemporaries were forced to stop watching “Mister Rogers” (Pittsburgh Royalty if ever there was any!) after the 1969 episode when he and Officer Clemmons confronted racial taboos by soaking their feet in the same plastic swimming pool, it was precisely then that Mister Rogers became a hero in our home. My mom was “woke” before the term existed.
As the trials begin for those charged with the tragic death of George Floyd, and as the cries for justice grow louder, I’ve taken up again an examination of conscience that seeks to root out the sin of racism in my life. While I continue to benefit from the firm foundation that I received from my parents and their convictions, I’m painfully aware that all of us have blind spots when it comes to prejudice — racial or otherwise.
My mom’s parents died when I was a toddler, and my father’s parents had both passed before I was 5. My memories of grandparents are accordingly shaped primarily by my great-grandmother, who died when I was 11. Born in Poland, she immigrated to Pittsburgh at the turn of the last century. She and my great-grandfather raised seven kids, supporting the family on a small butcher shop that went under during the Depression. My memories of her are of a very stern woman. When my class read “Hansel and Gretel” in school, I thought instantly of my great-grandmother. She had a kettle that she heated on an open fire and bottled her own homemade soda pop made from roots. For obvious reasons, I was always a little wary of anything that she would serve us.
When years later I would be assigned as a priest to her parish (she had long gone to God), I discovered that I wasn’t the only one who had found her to be difficult. The only positive things that I ever heard people say about her was that she had beautiful china and nice hair. There were all kinds of rumors that tried to explain her temperament, and many of them centered on the “fact” that she had been Jewish. My own mother, so proud to be “woke,” passed on as gospel truth that my great-grandmother had been born into a Jewish family and then kidnapped by gypsies. Perhaps my mom, so convicted about racism, wasn’t quite so good in dealing with anti-Semitism or anti-Roma prejudices.
As Providence would have it, the COVID pandemic (and the gift of a DNA test) has given me the opportunity to do a little genealogical research on the internet. My great-grandmother, it turns out, was neither Jewish nor stolen by gypsies. And, wouldn’t you know it, I seem to share more DNA with her family than with any other branch of my ancestors.
I’m mindful these days that our stories, unfortunately, all too often pass on and sustain prejudices that we don’t even recognize. Even those of us who believe we are free from the sin of racism have blind spots that need to be probed. The work of real conversion, always at the forefront in Lent, is difficult; but in Christ we can find the strength and the grace that makes it possible to work for a true transformation of the human heart. As we pray for our community during this challenging time, let’s be sure to pray as well for each other, that we might deepen our commitment to conversion, accept each other as true brothers and sisters, and never lose hope.
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