My Kaduchas And Yours

In a recent issue of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz published an article called “My Negro Problem—and Ours.” In it he told about the time a bunch of Negro kids clobbered him when he was a little boy in Brownsville, and how he didn’t squeal on them, and how he grew up to believe in full justice for the Negro, intermarriage and everything, but how he could never get over a residual fear or distrust of Negroes—so that while he would not forbid his daughter to marry a Negro, he wouldn’t be happy about it either. Commentary received an absolutely staggering amount of letters which have been published in three successive issues. Except for a few dissenters like the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, most of the letters were ecstatic in their praise of Podhoretz’ courage in speaking so honestly about his cowardice. And these were no ordinary letter-writers. Big names, big thinkers, a regular who’s who of the intellectual world. Arthur Cohen, Melvin Lasky, all kinds of really thoughtful people.

Well, this started me to thinking about my own childhood because I, too, was a kind of sissy—although I’ll say for myself that I was also very radical and sang “We Are the Builders” at a very early age. Like many Jewish families of the time we had edged up slightly in social status (if not income) by moving from the East Side where I was born to Williamsburg to Coney Island. We were living in Coney Island at the time I had this experience I want to tell about.

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