accept for a moment that you are a racist in the same sense that a potato or a carrot or a radish grows below ground and out of sight. i view myself that way, and i've thought a lot about it for many years.

it's unlikely i was born a racist, like say being born right-handed or with white eyebrows. it's much more likely i was influenced by one or more of my parents, in my case my angry at the world step-father, some of my friends and classmates, or perhaps my drunken Uncle Chuck.

how it got inside of me doesn't really matter. it's there and i have to deal with it, a slow growing cancerous tumor, just as damaging and deadly as any melanoma.

a book like "Paris Trout" is the surgical excision, the chemo, and the radiation to racism. Pete Dexter's exquisite novel takes us to where the potato, the carrot, and the radish are born and flourish and it squeezes racism's face to the surface like a festering boil of poisonous pus needing to be lanced. most of it is ugly stuff told in a most wondrous way. i hope you'll read it too. . . j

by John E. Irby