On the train from New York to Boston, I noticed that the old gentleman sitting next to me was blind. My doctoral thesis advisor was blind, so I had no difficulty in talking to the blind. I made him a cup of hot coffee. It was the time of the race riots in Los Angeles, and that led to a conversation about racism.
The old man told me that he was a southerner and had been brought up to believe that blacks were inferior, that his servants were black, and that he had never eaten with blacks or gone to school with them in the south.
When he was studying in the north, he was once assigned a picnic party by his classmates. He even wrote on the invitation that "we reserve the right to refuse anyone". In the south, this sentence means "we do not welcome black people". He said that sometimes when he met a black clerk, he would leave the money on the counter and let the black man take it without touching his hand.
I smiled and asked him, "then of course you won't marry a black man!" He laughed. "how could I marry a black man if I didn't socialize with them? Honestly, I thought any white man marrying a black man would shame his parents."
But while he was at graduate school in Boston, he had a car accident. Although he survived, he was completely blind and could see nothing. He went to a rehabilitation institute for the blind, where he learned how to use braille, how to walk with a cane, and so on. Gradually, I was able to live independently.
"But what bothers me most is that I don't know if he's black," he said. I talked to my counselor about my problems and he tried to enlighten me. I trusted him, told him everything and regarded him as my mentor. One day, the counselor told me he was black himself.
After that, my prejudice gradually disappeared completely. I could not tell whether people were white or black. For me, the color of my skin no longer means anything to me. As the bus drew near Boston, the old gentleman said, "I have lost my sight and my prejudice. How happy I am!"
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