The Big Kid from Wyoming Takes on the World: Norman Fruchter Told Me He Was a Jew

Wikipedia identifies Norman Fruchter as "a Jewish American writer, filmmaker, and academic" living in New York. In 1959 Norm and I were companions for several days aboard the ocean liner SS United States. We were Fulbright recipients on our way to England.

One evening Norm said, "There's something I should tell you, Don. I'm a Jew."

I puzzled over that memory for 60 years. At the time I didn't know Norm was a Jew; nor did I understand why I needed to know he was a Jew; nor did I have much idea even of what he meant by "I'm a Jew."

Recently I located Norm online, got in touch, and asked him if he recalled the conversation. He remembered too, even after all these years.

“Why did you think you should tell me you were a Jew?"

His answer: because I freely used racial and ethnic language when we were together. Presumably he thought I would moderate my speech if he declared his ethnicity. That would have been a reasonable assumption.

But Norm didn’t realize how deep my ignorance ran. I was oblivious to my racist speech. The announcement that I’d been hanging out with someone who was Jewish struck no spark of understanding or self-recognition in me. I just wondered, “What brought that up?”

Looking back . . .

A dumb kid from Wyoming

When I was growing up in Wyoming many people were racists. Others weren’t, or believed they weren’t. Either way, racial issues were not part of the public dialogue.

I was well into my adult years before it occurred to me that our high school quarterback, who was named Hursh, may have been Jewish. As an English major I knew about Shylock of course. But he happened long ago, far away, and in a play.

As to African Americans, only two families lived in Fremont County when I was a teenager. One husband went deer hunting with us. At the University of Wyoming I don’t remember seeing a black face on campus (except for the older couple who cooked for the Athletic Dorm).

That was just how people talked

My youthful racist language was habitual. It was also unconscious. There was neither meaning nor malice in the words I used. I just grew up parroting the adults around me.

"Wow, Norm. I wonder who else I offended," I replied.

I was thinking especially of a group I partied with that year at the University of Bristol. They brought reels of the deeply rhythmic music they had grown up with in Africa and the Caribbean. We danced 'til dawn. Literally.

Had I carelessly used insulting language around them? Probably not. But I can’t be sure.

Now a long-time resident of a small Caribbean island, I have a better perspective on those international students I knew six decades ago. Racial distinctions didn’t seem important to them, just as differences in features and pigmentation are not significant to those who live on this island today.

No one is different when everybody is

People with African, European, and Asian faces walk the streets of Bonaire. But only a few.

The genes have melded over the generations. The spectrum of skin color and facial features is broad and unbroken. No gaps appear where stereotypes might sneak in. We meet each other face to face as individuals.

In some places in the world people are certain that dark skin has meaning. That once clueless young man from Wyoming can't agree. Now 80, he’s been living out the final third of his life in darker-than-himself communities. If pigmentation signals something about the character and value of a person, positive or negative, he hasn’t discovered it yet.

What does white skin mean? Again, many people—darker and lighter—have their own answers to that question, and few uncertainties. The extremists on both fringes are vehement and disagree irreconcilably about what whiteness signifies. For myself, I haven’t encountered predictable characteristics, bad or good, among the less melanined.

Having taught mostly Muslim students for four years in a small Muslim owned medical school on the island, I can’t say what Muslims are like either.

Back to that conversation with Norman Fruchter on the United States six decades ago. Since then I’ve come to understand history better, and race, ethnicity, religion, genetics—those forces that magnify our separate tribal origins and camouflage our shared identity as individual members of a single species.

I’ve also become acquainted with hundreds, likely thousands, of people. Some I met said they were Jews. Presumably others were Jews as well. Most people I encountered probably weren’t Jews.

Unless people announce their heritage—as Norm did—I still can’t tell the difference.

Photo Supplement

Faces of Carnival

in the Dutch Part of the Caribbean, Plus a Royal Visit