Bill or Henry?

"Schwartzkopf." That was the word hissed repeatedly by an old man as he followed us, huffing and spitting he was so beside himself, as we walked down a sidestreet in Germany. This was in 1975 or 1976, thirty years after the end of WWII.
Literally translated, it means "black lover." It was true. I was with William. We faced other incidents of discrimination in Germany, more than in any other country, partly because they may have thought I was German.
A woman at the lunch counter in the train station refused to serve us, moving pointedly and repeatedly to the other end of the counter to avoid having to wait on us. The scariest moment was when we took the wrong train and ended up waiting on the platform in a tiny town as the other people on the platform began to assume a mob aspect, muttering among themselves while glancing our direction.
It also happened in other countries. In Rome at a famous sidewalk restaurant, the waiter brought our salads with a smirk; one bite and it was immediately apparent why. William's had been salted into inedibility and mine had been peppered. They had made their black and white point.
It was worse in Algeciras, Spain. While waiting for the ferry to cross over to Morocco, we went into a restaurant where William was served a beer into which the barman had pissed.
This latest incident involving Henry Louis Gates, who was arrested while trying to open the stuck door of his Harvard-owned townhouse, is a reminder that racism is still present in this country. What if he had been Bill Gates? The policeman would probably have said, "Can I help you get that stuck door open?"
I loved the comment of President Obama, who said he probably would have been shot under similar circumstances if trying to open the door at the White House.
I am listening tonight to KGO in San Francisco, and Dick Gregory is being interviewed on air. Always inciteful, he speaks truth without hate with the kind of resignation that can only result from growing up and surviving as long as he has in this society. Just listening to the cadence of his voice brings back feelings I haven't felt for years.
In my corner of the world, there are few black people. There are other minorities --- Hispanics and remnants of the tribes that once lived along this river. Dick Gregory once came to the Northwest to take up the fishing rights issue.
When I lived in New York, my second encounter with Miles Davis was because he was trying to hail a cab on West End Avenue, around the corner from his brownstone on 77th.
"Get me a cab," he said in his raspy whisper. "They'll stop for you because you're white." He was right.
An image of him playing his trumpet is on the wall over my computer. Next to him is the photo I took of Charles Mingus, lighting his pipe at the piano at UC Berkeley, and my Todd woodcut of Eric Dolphy.
Lou Donaldson also looks like he is praying while holding his horn in the sepia-tone photo I took of him this year at the Portland Jazz Festival. Right behind him is propped the album cover of "Underground," by Thelonious Monk. He is sitting at a piano with a gun over his shoulder in that famously staged photo echoing the French resistance. Bound and gagged in a chair is a German officer, and in the background is an eery echo of Patricia Hearst, a woman wearing a beret and carrying an automatic weapon.
While living in San Francisco during the years she was on the lam with the SLA, I was once pulled out of a car by the police on the Bay Bridge and had to explain myself because they thought I was her.
My mother occasionally walks into my room and holds her tongue while glancing at my gallery. Today, she expressed her outrage at the Gates incident while revealing some old attitudes. I did not see the footage. She said she was worried about the potential for civil unrest at a march planned tonight. The TV reporters had interviewed "some Negro women," she said, and they had said some "ugly things." I felt like saying, "Mom, they haven't been called a Negro for 40 years." But I held my tongue, too.
I guess it's true. I am a "schwartzkopf."