Bucketful Jokes

Having her hair done at a West Hempstead beauty parlor, a woman told a cautionary tale about racial prejudice. The story deserves a wider audience.

On a recent weekend in Atlantic City the woman related, she won a bucketful of quarters at a slot machine. She took a break from the slot for dinner with her husband in the hotel dining room. But first she would stash the quarters in her room. "I'll be right back and we'll go to eat," she told her husband and she carried the coin-laden bucket to the elevator bank.

As she was about to walk into an elevator she noticed two men already aboard. Both were black. One of them was big. Very big. An intimidating figure. The woman froze. Her first thought was: These two are going to rob me. Her next thought was: Don't be a bigot, they look like perfectly nice gentlemen, even if one of them is awfully black. But racial stereotypes are powerful, and fear immobilized her. She stood and stared at the two men. She felt more...