I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes it’s very, vary hard.
Several years ago a friend from high school posted an anti-Semitic meme on Facebook. I read it several times — maybe I was misreading it, maybe there was a charitable reading — but no, it was, no matter how I looked at it, clearly anti-Semiitic.
I posted a comment, pointing out the anti-Semitism and why I was reading it this way.
She said that, no, she wasn’t anti-Semitic. She was a Christian. She loved Israel.
I’d done what I could, and I let it go.
Her son went to college. She posted with clear maternal pride a photo of him and other members of the student government flashing a white power hand symbol.
Because it was a group of kids, I thought it was possible that I was misreading the situation and the gesture. I said nothing. Nonetheless, the thought lingered. I had real doubts that the gesture was all that innocent.
Yesterday she posted another photo of her son, again with maternal pride, again flashing the same white power hand gesture.
No, I decided, that earlier photograph wasn’t a mistake. No, the memes and the gestures were not innocent.
I don’t know her son. I’ve not seen her in thirty-five years; I left West Virginia and never went back, except for one trip in 2006.
But, I’ve seen enough. When people show you who they are, believe them. And this high school friend has repeatedly shown me who she is — and who her family is.
And that’s sad. Like I said, I want to think the best of people… only in this case, I can’t. I just can’t.