Race Relations

 David recalls a conversation with his father, Gene:

In a long conversation once about immigrants to America, he told me the following story (Paraphrasing his words):

My best friend when I was growing up in Coos Bay was a black kid who lived up the slough from where Pappy’s house was, about a 10-15 minute walk towards town.  One day we were roughhousing around and it turned into a fight of some kind.  While we were going at it pretty good, both physically and verbally, I called the other kid a ‘nigger’.  Not missing a beat, the other kid fired back at me, “Fish Finn, Fish Finn” This was a huge insult to Finns around Coos Bay at the time.  That stopped me in my tracks; I had never looked at words and insults that way before. It changed my thinking.