I have a remembrance. Long ago, I was playing in a baseball game as a nine-year-old at an all-white 1950’s school. The school’s lone Mexican kid walked up dressed as a catcher, complete with chest-protector-cushion and an iron-grate face mask.

It was obvious he wanted to play in the game.

The kids, in unison, almost as one, shouted the obscenities they knew at him. He trudged away as he had come, alone.

I didn’t join in the yelling, but stood by and watched. I felt bad for that boy, real bad, but didn’t have the courage to go against the group, supposedly my group. Later, some of these same kids I wanted so to impress would become my own personal tormentors.

I wished to this day I’d had the courage to throw my arm around that boy, to yell at the rest of my so-called friends what a bunch of cowards they were. I wished I’d taken a black eye, or banishment, or whatever punishment would have been dealt out by the crowd, the price paid for having the bravery to stand alone---in the right.

I’d feel better about myself today in writing this article on racism if I had.

But I didn’t. I just watched.

I imagine that boy’s tears, feelings of loneliness, and his father’s attempts to soothe him, to tell him things would be all right, knowing full well his son would have to face the same kids again tomorrow.

Hating someone simply because they look different is in reality self-hate, born of fear. Fear needs a scapegoat. All human beings, in all colors, are susceptible.

When I’ve had a bad day at work and I’m frustrated and angry, and I see someone of another race cavorting on the TV screen, acting with what seems to be the cocky arrogance I wish I had, I sometimes feel helpless, small, and threatened.

It’s so easy then to hate members of a group.

But what you don’t see is that out there somewhere, there’s someone from that same group, who at that moment, just like me, is angry at his life, scared about his job, feels small and threatened, just like me.

We seem different. We’re not. Just seems so on the surface. The skin. We want the same things, love, acceptance, respect.

Then, why do we hate?

This column should conclude by going back to that little Latino boy, the one we wouldn’t let play baseball.

The very next week, I was daydreaming in class. A dreamy romantic who loved fictional adventures, I had a habit of daydreaming. I was drawing pictures of Superman, my hero, on a note pad. The teacher, who wasn’t particularly warmhearted, to rub my nose in it, held the Superman pictures aloft for the children to see.

They laughed in ridicule. The teacher, to her everlasting shame, joined them in mocking me.

I screamed inside with humiliation. They might as well of torn my heart out.

Then I noticed, the only one who wasn’t laughing---the little Mexican boy whose name I hadn’t even bothered to learn. He wasn’t laughing. He suddenly grew huge in my esteem.

I looked at him, and felt a little better.

The color of his skin didn’t matter anymore.