Finally got around to seeing American History X. Interesting, thought-provoking, powerful, well-acted, well-written, serious - no doubt all adjectives those involved with the film would want viewers to use to describe it. One of the most interesting and poignant sections is when the father, shown in a flashback, is showing his prejudice in reasonable way, softly and logically giving the reasons why it's ok to be racist. His sons don't lap it up at first, but they love him, and they accept the prejudice because they don't know better, they aren't worldly or wise, and although it makes them uneasy, rejecting their father's opinion would feel like they're rejecting him. In my opinion, this is probably the hardest lesson the two main male characters have to learn, to love someone without believing, accepting, and integrating (ironically in this case) everything a loved one, a role model, even a father, believes without rejecting the whole person.
I had to learn this with my own grandfather, who I loved and revered more than I can say in words, but only in memories and pulses of my heart. My grandfather was a soft bigot, prejudiced against Blacks, Jews, and Latinos. These are the groups I heard him disparage in our conversations on the front porch around sunset. Given that he talked about these groups negatively with me on a couple occasions when I was very young, I have a difficult time believing those were the only groups he negatively stereotyped and disparaged. At the time I heard it, I was quite young, probably under 10, and I didn't have the courage, experience, or wisdom to push back. But I didn't believe those things he said. They didn't feel right and I didn't accept or integrate them into my world view.
That's not completely true. I had some difficulty overcoming my discomfort with homosexuality partially because of his views, something else he tried to help me form a preconceived notion about. Because I didn't know any homosexuals for quite a while, until I was 20 or so, I didn't have any immediate knowledge or experience to refute this particular poison, and it persisted for a few years after I did. On the other hand, with the other poisons he tried to feed me, I was going to school in California's San Joaquin Valley, which is ethnically diverse, and if I didn't have friends in all of them, I had enough exposure to each of them personally or to human, not cartoonish, portrayals of them in media, to know the statements he made about them were probably untrue.
And yet I still loved and admired my grandfather and I still do, very much. As an adult, an important part of loving him is seeing him clearly and being honest with myself and others about his flaws, his bigotry being one of them. I don't know if he was a great man, but he was my grandfather, and even if by negative example, he taught me valuable lessons. He wasn't nearly as curmudgeonly as Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, another good movie on lifelong prejudice and late transformation, but he was a man in a similar, though much softer vein. Towards the end of his life, as his own weaknesses and his mortality became very obvious to him, his heart softened and he learned to see and treat people more as individuals than just their appearances. This wasn't just a gift to those around him, his family and the diverse group he had coffee with at Denny's in the morning, but mostly to himself and his own ailing heart.
Thank you Grandpa Spitler.
