Had a weird dinner tonight with a long-time buddy from my HS class.
He admitted to participating in a blackface incident in an elective class at our school. No record of it is known to exist, but it’s been eating at him for the past several decades. I didn’t even know it had happened.
But I told him that I had always considered him one of the best of us, and pointed out he was the only person EVER to talk to me about it...or the even worse things that happened there. That speaks to his true character. To my mind, the adult in charge was the source of the crucial failure. And if it happened once, did it happen any other times? And some of the former students are now part of its current teaching staff & administration.
We discussed the possibility of talking to our school’s current administration to educate against future repetitions or similar behavior.
On top of that, he revealed that the most conservative voice in our class had come out and is currently engaged. When I say “conservative”, let me say that his graduation speech embarrassed the guest speaker and pissed off the Bishop so much you could see him chewing out the Headmaster in real time. His coming out was mind blowing, yes, but it suddenly made some of his puzzling actions in those days make more sense.