Above: 4th-grade folders, “Fatty” Mitch, two film classics
My Real Memoir: The Year My Conscience Awoke
A lot of things occupied more real estate in my 4th-grade brain than the plights of others. Things like improving my spelling (note “My Exilent Work” folder above) and perfecting my autograph (“It’s in the paper! He’s everywhere!”).
Adventure and science-fiction movies occupied significant cerebral footage (as did books): Around the World in 80 Days, Forbidden Planet, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Swiss Family Robinson–I would have given anything to be shipwrecked and live in a treehouse like theirs! Disneyland’s Swiss Family Treehouse opened two years later, and I spent hours there pretending it was my new home.
Humor also occupied a major mental parcel. I loved Abbot and Costello movies and Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes. When Some Like It Hot came out that spring, I laughed until my stomach ached (I also developed a prepubescent crush on Marilyn Monroe). And The Twilight Zone staked out its own deliciously creepy corner of my brain (“Submitted for your approval…”).
Yet despite all these intellectual preoccupations, my 4th grade brush with “persecution” had awakened a new level of awareness about others, especially those who were oppressed. I delivered newspapers, so I knew there were places like China, Cuba, and the USSR where people weren’t completely free. And that was just wrong!
Movies opened my eyes too. I’d seen The Diary of Anne Frank and Ben Hur, and learned that Jews had been persecuted forever. This gave me a context for a particular Jewish boy who was our school’s official “cootie bug.” I hated this, but was secretly glad it wasn’t me, and was ashamed of feeling that way.
Then I got a taste of stigmatization myself. Having grown more sideways than vertically that year, I started being shoved around and called “Fatty.” Still, it was nothing compared to what that Jewish kid or our Japanese-American classmates were called. One of whom was particularly proud of his father’s medals for serving on “our side” in WWII. When I stood by him and tried to explain this, I was labeled a “Jap-lover.”
I’d also seen movies about people with unique or deformed features. I would distort my voice and body, then look in the bathroom mirror and say lines from those movies, and cry. Even though I was regarded as “clever” these days, I still identified with people who were “different.”
And then one afternoon, I overheard Mom arguing with Dad regarding his signing a petition against letting a “colored” family move into our neighborhood. I was stunned. Many of my friends were Hispanic or Asian, but I always wondered why there were no Black people here. Was this why? I told my father I was ashamed of him! Surprisingly, he didn’t yell or punish me. He said I didn’t understand–he wasn’t against negroes but other people were, and it would lower “our property values.”
The following year, Mom insisted that we see a movie, A Raisin in the Sun, about a family “politely” blocked from moving into an all-white suburb. I remember the way she kept looking over at Dad during the screening. And the convictions that awoke in me the year before grew deeper still.
To read My Real Memoir from the start, click here. To read the next episode, click here.
I, sir, admire your writings. You write so eloquently and expressively. I am grateful to be on this platform with such gifted writers. You all put it together, what seems to me as effortlessly—like a professional photographer takes a photo… you give it life! I love that because I experience it as if I was there, and for a reader that says a lot.
Thank you for sharing ❤️
I’m so pleased to hear that my writing has that effect on you, Lupe. 🧡
I think I became aware of other peoples’ sorrow when I read a book about Pompeii. That was more natural disaster, still…I became an animal advocate around the time of “Bless the Beasts and the Children” probably earlier but I don’t remember. You should be proud that you stood up for “different” kids, that takes guts. I wish I had, and I do that now, but as a child not so much, I was afraid. Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
My privilege, Martha. 🧡
Exilent post! I remember when the small Missouri town where I grew up, would not allow a black family to live there. I could not understand their hateful prejudice. My cat had just had a litter of kittens. Each kitten was a different color, and yet they were all equally kittens — soft, furry, and sweet. As a young adult, I learned that my paternal grandfather was half black. Because he could ‘pass for white,’ he ran away from home at the age of 12 to escape the evil Jim Crow laws, and he lived on his own from then on. Racial prejudice has ruined so many lives.
You grew up surrounded by what I caught mere glimpse of, Linda. I’m so glad you could see from the start that it was wrong. 🧡 Thank you for your exilent comment. ;>)
Oh, I agree with you… John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charly was my eye-opener about the US of the 60’s. Having grown up in Switzerland, I have not come across many – what am I allowed to say – people of different colours. Steinbeck grew up, where that was not a problem either, and he had friends from all colours. And then, with Charly, he travelled through the south of the US… I could not believe, what he saw, it was a lesson of history for me. And this book IS worth reading – and rereading.
🧡
Your mother sounds like a jewel. 😁
🧡 She was always supportive of my dad in front of me, Nancy, but she wasn’t afraid to tell him in private when she thought he was wrong.
Mitch, I just wanted to say how powerful your insight in this piece really is. The way you revisited that moment in your childhood—when your conscience first woke up—and traced how it shaped your awareness of injustice was both tender and deeply compelling. You didn’t just tell a story; you invited readers into the slow, sacred work of becoming someone who sees others with compassion. That kind of honesty carries weight, and it points people toward the kind of Kingdom awareness Jesus keeps trying to cultivate in all of us.
And truly, well done. It’s clear how much reflection, courage, and emotional labor went into writing something this vulnerable. You sifted through memory, named hard truths, and held them up in a way that helps others examine their own hearts. That’s Kingdom work—quiet, faithful, transformative. Keep leaning into that gift. Your willingness to tell the truth about your own formation helps the rest of us grow in ours.
Thank you, as always, for your kind and encouraging words, Michael.
Mitch, being of the same generation as you, I can relate to being confused by statements from parents that seem out of character, when we’ve started out thinking of them as perfect. I know what you mean about books that open our eyes to the perspectives of others. I think Black Like Me was the book that first opened (broke) my heart. I think I experienced “white guilt” way before it became a thing.
I agree, Annie. I didn’t read any Black authors until later on, either, but Huckleberry Finn had that effect on me.
Mitch, your piece was deeply moving, and I related to so much of what you described—from the Abbott and Costello days to the experience of being different, and your mention of A Raisin in the Sun. That movie has always been a favorite of mine. Its message remains as relevant today as it was then.
My experience with my dad was different. I don’t recall ever hearing him express prejudice, although I grew up surrounded by townspeople who were openly bigoted.
I eventually learned that an elderly man who frequented Dad’s barbershop had been involved in a lynching in the early 1900s. That knowledge changed how I saw him, and I believe it changed Dad’s opinion as well. By the time we learned the details, however, the man was on his deathbed. His wife was helpless, with only a few people she could turn to.
As life went on, I learned that others in our small town with similarly troubling histories reached the end in much the same way: nearly alone, with few people showing up, and the sins of their past lingering like unwritten eulogies.
A double tragedy, Ben. “The sins of the fathers…”
Very powerful piece, Mitch! 👏
Thank you, T. 🧡
My pleasure.
Happy Friday!, Mitch.
U 2 T!
I had the same feeling about swiss family robinson Mitch, I used to make my kids watch it every xmas, they were never as enthralled by the tree house as I was.
Kids these days–go figure. ;>)
Raisin in the Sun is a wonderful movie…I was so nieve to believe that racism had been overcome in our generation…it’s ugly head is everywhere right now…
It is indeed, Pamela.
Your self-awareness and ability to draw out your childhood in such an empathetic and charming manner is second to none. Thanks so much. My own experience of growing up as a minority WASP child in a largely Jewish neighbourhood, during the 1967 Six Days War, (and being so unaware of things that I failed to realize that all my friends were Jewish!) might speak to a similar but different situation.
Indeed, Christopher, a reversal of the usual scenario.
Wow!
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You grew up around the same point in time that I did, Mitch. I can tell that when you note TV programs and movies. The big difference is that I grew up in small town Saskatchewan, Canada. Aside from USA history classes in school, we had no first-hand experience with people of different races than us … until we had TV sets.