377 days, Blog #127 - a question

My dad was an MP in the army.  MP – military police.  (Not a minister of parliament, which is a weird confusion with which my later life has played tricks upon my comprehension.)  As a consequence, I have often noticed in movies and television that they are frequently portrayed in a negative light.  Or, at the very least, a marginal one.  I can’t say that I have ever really heard a lot of positive glowing reviews of the military police.  

I know my dad chose that path in Vietnam.  I know he chose to leave that path when he came home.  He told me that it would have been possible to become a policeman as a career.  But he didn’t want that.  He has told me that once he left Vietnam, he didn’t want to have anything to do with guns if he could help it ever again.

I know that and the stories he has told me about being an MP have shaped me and my perceptions of the world.  I know the very first thing he encountered in Vietnam was a race riot… that broke out over mashed potatoes.  I don’t know what happened.  I don’t know who was punished for it.  I don’t know who got away with something.  I do know my dad went to Vietnam because he was so horrified at how Alabama reacted to the assignation of Martin Luther King, Jr.  I know that he was appalled by some of the attitudes he encountered in the army after growing up on Bell Hill in Worcester and knowing a diverse community of peers.  I know that something about those details has informed my critical thinking of race and racial bias.  But I also know that when I told my father I accept responsibility for my own racial bias, he couldn’t comprehend.

He tried to.  At 66 years of age, he took pause and reflected on how I could come to that conclusion when he determined not to raise me to be that way.  He paused and he wondered if it was something that we don’t realize we are learning.  Or doing.

Good for my dad.

I don’t know if that thought crossed his mind and faded away as he inspected the wood pile.  But I’m impressed with him for taking a minute to reflect on that and think about how something could be true without fighting that it isn’t true.  He can be stubborn in a lot of ways, but I give him a lot of credit for not digging in his heels to resist the idea that one or both of us could be guilty of racial bias, in spite of our best intentions to not be.

The thing is, I believe there are a lot of people who are willing to ask the question.  I think it helps if the question isn’t articulated in an offensive tone.  I think it doesn’t matter what one does in life or how much one tries… it doesn’t absolve us from the opportunity to reflect on the question.

I am glad to have a parent who illustrates this for me and glad that we can ask the question of one another.