Paul Gottfried

July 30, 2009

Like Marx, who was nicknamed “der Mohre,” I have the misfortune of being the darkest person in my extended family. This used to occasion mirth among my children, who insisted that all of us had black ancestors. When my youngest daughter Sara went to school in Montgomery County, Maryland, she explained to a teacher in a class devoted to “diversity” that her father was black. Most of the rest of the year she received favorable treatment from the school authorities, until the celebration of MLK’s birthday, when she committed an unsettling faux pas. She responded to the question “What was the biggest achievement of this great man?” by explaining: “He forced blacks into public bathrooms.” Presumably that was not the PC answer.