Have You Ever Had an "Oh, Shit!" Moment?

The “Oh, Shit!” Moment

As a gay man, I've most certainly had an Oh, Shit! moment in the workplace. I'm not trying to make this comparable and I cannot say I know what it's like to face what women face but I can empathize with them and I can recognize the advantages being a white male has brought to my life. I also find myself especially keen to these issues after how horribly I've watched all the important women in my life be treated. People will respond in varying ways when they've been wronged and I cannot support all of those decisions but I will respect them and I can see clearly how unnecessary it was to wrong them into making these decisions at all.

I also found myself keen to racism at a very early age. I'm from the South. My mother's family - tobacco farmers and my father's family - tobacco farmers. I spent a great amount of my upbringing on a North Carolina farm and what I saw was often unkind. From my most distant memories I knew I was troubled by the things I witnessed and by the time I was old enough to start school, I had clearly become the the black sheep of the family. I remember asking my Sunday school teacher what was wrong with black people as I just couldn't understand it and she replied "Jesus doesn't love them". Enough said. These injustices I witnessed so early in life shaped who I became. A loud mouth, liberal activist fighting in a sea of Southern white racists. I faced many difficulties that could have been avoided had I simply followed suit, but I did then and I do now call bullshit when I see it. And it cost me a many a whoopin'. I suppose that's why being asked to leave the Democratic Party and repeatedly being called a racist by the community I was so long a member of is so offensive to me now.