On Becoming “WOKE”

June 18/19, 2025

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

George Orwell "Animal Farm”

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision by a 6-3 majority that upheld the law in Tennessee denying transgender youth gender affirming treatment. What does that mean? It means that under the guise of protecting young people from the results of decisions they’re “too young to make,” they are condemned to develop the secondary sexual characteristics of their birth gender. Something that is physically irreversible and psychologically devastating. Apparently the legal principle as I understand it (I’m not a lawyer) of doing the least possible harm to the fewest number of people is lost on the conservative majority of this court.

In 86 years i have lived through a lot of changes in attitude towards ethnic, gender, racial, and religious minorities. In junior high school, it was considered okay to beat up “fags” because otherwise they would attack you sexually. To my knowledge, no one I knew ever did but it was talked of openly. Later, when I became a military officer, gays were banned from military service because being gay was considered shameful by society and, therefore closeted gays could be blackmailed which made them a security risk. That was probably true until the time of Bill Clinton’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” which was terrible policy but was, at the time, a necessary political compromise. It took until 2010 during the Obama years, for “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” to be repealed. Finally, people who happened to be gay could serve openly and proudly in the United States military. Until now. Because now Pete Hegseth in the name of focusing on war fighting rather than DEI, is purging the senior ranks of the U.S. military of “distractions” — women senior flag officers, high ranking racial minorities, and anyone who is other than “straight”.

During the last decade of my career in high tech, I met the ugliest woman I have ever known. Which demands explanation. I was working for a small trade magazine publishing, conference, and market research company. We were working on a research project and needed a temporary data entry person. I called our temporary agency, they said they had the perfect person for us but she was trans. I asked the women in the company who would of necessity share a restroom with her. No problem. I okayed her hire. The next day she showed up. Square jawed, long nosed, broad shouldered, narrow waisted, tall, and with a 5 o’ clock shadow. But she worked well and got along famously with the other women in othe company. Competence counts.

The following is a personal story about my own journey to overcome racial prejudice and become "WOKE” which is not a bad word.

A Journey

by Leland Katz

When I was nine, my sister was born and my mother started having a cleaning woman in once a week. She was always Black and was always known as “the schvartze”. My mother didn’t think of herself as bigoted and would have been horrified to be called a racist. Nonetheless and unbeknownst to me, her attitude towards these women and the popular culture of the time affected me far more deeply than I knew.

The first Black people I remember actually getting to know were in high school. In 1954, when I was 15, we moved and I attended Classical High School in Springfield, Massachusetts. All of us had middle class backgrounds and aspirations to higher education.

There were two young Black men I came to know and become friends with while I was there. That was the first time I became aware of having to work to treat Black people the same as I would anyone else.

During my final year on active duty in the Air Force in 1963/4, I was officer-in-charge of the Athens, Greece station of the Armed Forces Courier Service, with four enlisted people and three other young lieutenants under my supervision.

Two of the enlisted people were African-American.

A young Black lieutenant, Gary Williams, (not his real name) was from the south. He had missed the civil rights movement of that era, but his younger brother had been injured during a civil rights demonstration, and lost a year of college. As a result, Gary had a hard time trusting white people, and he and his wife became socially involved with the two Black airmen.

One morning, I was dealing with some backed up paperwork. Gary was in the vault, getting ready to move some bags and boxes of top secret and cryptographic material to the flight line. Harold Black (also not his real name), the Airman on duty, was out in front of the station, chatting with a friend. Their conversation, consisted of the usual banter between young men with nothing else to do.

Just then, Gary called out, “Harold, come here please.” I watched, not certain that Harold had heard the call, when Gary stuck his head out of the vault door and called out in a much louder voice, “Airman Black, come here, I need you.” This time there was no doubt that Airman Black had heard Gary, but the conversation continued. I was debating whether I should intervene when Lieutenant Williams came out and figuratively grabbed Airman Black by the scruff of his neck and hauled him into the vault.

I was aware that, leery of whites, Gary had allowed himself to become buddies with the Black airmen. It had created a situation that had to be corrected. When the work was done and Gary had headed over to the base cafeteria, I called the young airman over to my desk. Once he was there, I quietly but firmly said, “Harold, when there is work to be done, I don’t ever want to hear an officer have to call you more than once like that again.” Doing it that way I did not embarrass either the big airman or the lieutenant, but I let him know that Lieutenant Williams was an officer like any other and deserving of the respect that went with the silver bars on his collar.

It worked. The word got to the other two airmen that the officer-in-charge considered Lieutenant Williams to be on a par with the other officers. The word also got to Lieutenant Williams that I knew he deserved the respect he had earned and would not brook behavior that was insubordinate to any officer. The result was that Gary was less on guard than he had been before. Tension was reduced and working relationships in the station were smoother.

About fifteen years later, I had become the manager of the media services group within Digital Equipment Corporation. One of my first tasks was to replace the supervisor of our producer/director staff, who had left to take another job.

After an extensive search, Lois Schwartz (not her real name) came in for an interview. A senior producer/director at WGBH-TV, Boston's premiere public television station, she was a breath of fresh air. A strong personality, well spoken, and able to discuss television and audio production techniques with thoroughness and familiarity, she met all of the criteria I had in mind. She was my candidate. She was also Black.

She became a member of the media services team and — over time — one of my good business friends. This time, I hadn't had to work as hard to treat her as I would anyone else. Later, we had an opening in her staff that had to be filled. I gave the hiring assignment to her.

Several weeks and three failed candidates later, I sat down to talk to Lois about her choices. “There’s nothing wrong with any of these guys. It’s just that there’s nothing really good or, better yet, great about them either. Can’t we do better?”

“I thought we wanted someone with corporate media experience,” Lois responded.

“But these guys are used to producing media for internal usage. We do a lot of marketing work and need to do better,” I said. “Don’t you know anyone more talented than that?”

“You got me,” Lois replied, “I do have someone I know at Channel 2 who is a producer/director there, and looking for a job. She is absolutely outstanding.”

“Then why haven’t you brought her in?” I asked.

“She’s a good friend of mine and I didn’t want to be accused of conflict of interest,” she said.

“Don’t worry about that. If she has what it takes, that’s what we’re looking for," I said.

The next week Lois brought in her candidate. She was one of Channel 2’s top producer/directors, with a lot of highly creative shows under her belt. And in talking to Roberta, I came to the conclusion she might intimidate the rest of the producer/director team a little, but she would add energy, and would be the challenge the rest of the team needed to stretch themselves. “Is this your candidate?” I asked.

“Yes she is. I think she’s perfect.” A month later Roberta became the newest addition to the producer/director team.

Some time later, Lois told me she had been talking about me with her boyfriend, and he had decided that I had a great deal of courage and was a hero.

“Why? Because I hired you?”

“That’s part of it. But you hired me and then trusted me to make my own hiring decisions and you backed me up when it came to issues with my team.”

“But that’s my job. I hired you because you were the best person for the job and I’d do it again.”

“That’s just it,” she replied, “our experience is that white guys don’t do that.”

“Thank you. But I have to tell you, I don’t feel like a hero.”

“And that’s why you are.”

It was about that time I realized I no longer had to work to treat Black people the same as anyone else. Finally it was now the natural way to behave. I was forty-one. Forty-four years ago. It had take. a very long time for me to overcome my childhood prejudices. I did not think of myself as a hero then and I still don't think I am but I’m beginning to better understand why Lois and her boyfriend did.

I had grown up lower middle class, but I had advantages — privilege if you will — that I would not have had if I were Black. Among those, was not worrying about being shot if stopped by the police.

What does it all mean? It means that if America is to fulfill her promise, and if the great American Experiment in Constitutional Democracy is to be a success, all of us — black, brown, Asian, Anglo, Hispanic, Jew, native born, immigrants, LGBTQ+, and all others — must continually work to mold our culture and our society into one of which we can all be justly proud.

Happy Juneteenth.