At the post-funeral shiva (the Jewish version much like a gathering to eat and visit together after a funeral) of my 18-year-old goddaughter recently, I had the occasion to truly think about racial and cultural differences and the world we live in.  My goddaughter was African American.  She was adopted at birth by my dear friend who is Jewish.  Literally, it was at birth, as the adoption was an open one and my friend cut the umbilical cord of the baby she did not birth, but would take home with her.  She was the only mother her daughter would ever know.   In the Jewish faith, children take on the status of the mother, so my goddaughter was Jewish as well.  Not long after the birth, my friend married a Catholic teddy bear of a human being who adopted her daughter and truly took her on as his own.  They also had a biological daughter  a short while later.  They divorced after several years, but remain close and my goddaughter and her dad were as if joined at the hip.

Over the years, whenever I attended events such as their wedding or the bris bat (sort of like a Jewish baby christening ceremony) or even her bat mitzvah, the events have been a mix of Jewish tradition and Christian concepts, and a gathering of people of all races and faiths.

I thought about this the other day as I sat at the repast looking both at the scores of varied people in attendance at the marking of this sad occasion, and past them out the window at vast Lake Michigan far below, across the street.  I watched old friends reconnecting over the death of a beloved family member of their dear friend, children laughing and playing with the resilience that only youth can bring, young adults and college students I’d known since the day they were born sharing a cautious laugh, much aware of the seriousness of the occasion and the terrible sudden loss of someone in their age group, perhaps their first rude awakening to the reality that youth does not equal invincibility.

But, what I really found myself thinking about was how there were so many different kinds of people, and even though the event was a Jewish shiva, people still found common ground to come together and share grief and laughter.

I thought about this because as I had googled for the news article on my goddaughter’s death earlier that day, I came across  the most unabashedly racist posting imaginable about it.  The posting had taken the family photo used in a newspaper article, showing my goddaughter with her white parents and sister, and paired it with a headline about her dying because she was “driving while black” by painting her nails, listening to loud rap music and texting, all (except the possible texting) total racist fiction.  The author and the on-line posters who responded,  used this horrendously sad event as an occasion to negatively comment on her race, as well as her being adopted by a white family, and the decision to do so.  On-line posters said vicious things like the truck driver who hit her did the world a favor, and that the whole family of liberal democrats should have been in the car with her, and on and on.

Part of me wants to, as my daughter posited, ignore this and give it no more life or energy than it deserves as a mean-spirited racist rant.  Part of me wants to address it because it is so shocking.  Part of me wants to address it because it is part of what we need to know exists and is still with us, even as we try to pat ourselves on the back and talk about being a “post-racial society” (whatever that is…).

The latter two parts won out.  I think they did so because I don’t want us to forget that this element still exists in our society.  That is, someone who would take the sad occasion of the death of an 18-year-old in a tragic car accident to put out there for the world to see, their vile, mean-spirited opinions about African Americans and the idea of races coming together in love.

“Racist” is a word I rarely use.  It is not a conclusion I jump to.  It is one I crawl to and only then if I have to.  I understand that racism and racists exist, but with there being so much ignorance of each other in the world and so many who would rush to characterize that ignorance as racism, I prefer to be more conscious in my choice of words.  If someone tells me they are racist, of course, I am willing to believe them.  Otherwise, I don’t necessarily assume that certain questionable acts are so motivated. But, given the nature of these comments, I am quite comfortable in concluding that they are, in fact, racist, and intentionally so.

I am a lawyer and a professor, so logic is important to me.  I guess that trying to bring logic to this situation is pretty useless.  When people feel as negatively as this toward a perfect stranger who belongs to a group they dislike, I don’t think it is based on logic.  After all, they did not know her and she did nothing to them to earn their ire.

I thought about how my goddaughter’s parents, upon meeting, had refused to relegate themselves to simply being in a category (Jewish and Catholic) and instead dealt with each other as human beings and allowed their feelings for each other to grow and blossom rather than deny they could do so because they were of different religions and cultures.  I thought about being an African American and Baptist minister’s kid never once got in the way of my and my friend’s nearly 30-year friendship.  I thought about how different all the people gathered in this North Lakeshore Drive condo high above Lake Michigan were, yet how much they all enjoyed this event despite it being such a sad occasion.

As I looked at the people interacting, I found myself wondering why it is that we can’t all just get along.  Why is it we don’t try harder to find common ground, to feel less threatened by difference, to be more willing to understand that all each of us wants to do is be loved, respected and find some measure of personal comfort as we journey through this world? If we don’t make the effort to do it, one encounter at a time, how will it ever get done?