Prejudice Can Strike Any One of Us

Have you ever been the victim of prejudice? Have I? Oh, man, have I ever!

And therein lies a tale that has remained untold for more than 50 years . . .

It was some time in the late 1960s. I was a college student, often traveling from my family's home in northeastern Ohio to the university I was attending in southwestern Ohio. And, as I came from a blue-collar lower-middle-income family, and had 6 siblings, I owned no car — and could command no family vehicle — to journey twixt school and home. So I, along with my older brother, who happened to attend the same university, was forced to rely on hitchhiking as the sole means of making the 250-mile journey to and fro.

Even though I was an average white kid, I was also an average Cleveland rock n' roller, hip to the times. So, of course, I sported shoulder-length hair and a fairly well established facial fringe as well. My typical attire included bell-bottomed blue jeans and some sort of patterned (if not psychedic) shirt. I never went in much for beads or medallions or headbands or massive rawhide belts, but a braided cord bracelet often made it onto my wrist. My brother, more of an egghead than me, usually had shorter hair but better established face fuzz.

Needless to say, we could never count on being picked up by the likes of good ol' Butt-Chinned Barry (pictured above) — someone middle aged, middle income, traditional, conservative, ethnically bland, religious to a degree, and strait-laced. No, any ride we got was much more likely to be with someone who was a bit fringe-element, if you know what I mean. Most straights would catch one glimpse of us and just keep on zipping' by.

So, inevitably, after hours of arms extended, thumbs erect, and spring sunshine cooking us by the side of the highway, we'd had our fill. It had been better than an hour since any less-than-likely ride candidates had happened by. The nearest moderately populated burg was more than a few miles off the main drag. Being tired and hungry and out of other options, my brother and I therefore began the long trek toward the little town in the heart of Ohio's agricultural belt, backpacks dragging behind us.

More of the hot afternoon passed, and we began to encounter a building here and there, then structures flanking our route, then diagonal head-in parking. Soon we were navigating along the little town's Main Street, in the heart of the action.

It was then we happened to pass a barber shop's glassed-in storefront. As we did so, we both turned to glance within, seeing our reflected mildly hippie-ish images in the stenciled windowpane. And solemnly staring back at us, tracking us with their steely stern glares, happened to be three nearly identical aging farmers in three nearly identical barber chairs with three nearly identical aging barbers tending to their skulls. Of course, they were all clean-shaven. They all had hair so short as to display ear-bracketing 'whitewalls' of skull. All of the little hair present was oiled and slicked tightly from a thumb-wide parting flat across the cranial domes.

And from their piercing gazes, we clearly received the broadcast message: "You are different. You are undesirable. You are not wanted and not welcome here."

Over the past 50 years, long hair and blue jeans and hairbands and tie-dye became almost as mainstream as pasteurized milk — and have in fact begun to fade away, ceding ground to ever-newer styles and lifestyles. Rock begat hard rock and glam rock and punk rock and metal and death metal and thrash and punk and grunge and disco and dance and emo and hip-hop and rap and dubstep and so many other moods and moves. Fashion has likewise broadened and changed and embraced the new, the weird, the offbeat, the strange. Creatively heroic beards have recently come into their own.

Socially, we now encounter millenials and x-ers, y-ers and z-ers, YouTubers and Instagrammers, me-tooers and no-morers, L and G and B and T and Q. Our racial melting-pot keeps melting and mixing and stirring. So, while particular prejudices may prove harder to precisely define, they are certainly present in ever-varying types and degrees.

Isn't about time we get past them?