Racial Attitudes (5)

I recall one other incident associated with race that helped me to look within myself.  After I moved Kansas City, I formed a friendship with James Maxwell, current Vice-President for institutional expansion at Southwestern Christian College in Terrell, Texas.  He was one of the smartest men I’ve ever met, and he was highly sensitive on the subject of racial issues discrimination. 

He was enrolled in graduate school at the Central Baptist Seminary.  Sometimes I went there to use their library, and I would occasionally run into him.  One day we stood on the steps of the library, and addressed the racial issue head on.  By this time we knew one another well enough to say what was on our hearts.  Our discussion was respectful, but quite direct.  Neither one of us backed down from our viewpoints, which were not precisely the same.  

At one point in the discussion I said, “Jim, I understand how you feel.”  He said, “Norman, you can’t understand how I feel unless you get inside my skin.”  I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody, “I understand how you feel” from that day till this.  I may understand their rhetoric, and even feel sympathy for their plight, but Jim was right, I cannot understand how someone else feels.  He taught me a great deal more than a different perspective on racial issues.  We should never, ever assume that we can completely comprehend what goes on in the mind of another person.