The Sexual Assault that Made Me Racially Conscious

This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists.

I grew up on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New York. We lived in Turner Towers, right off of Grand Army Plaza. We were one of four Gentile families in the building. On the whole, I had a happy childhood in a wonderful city with two loving parents.

The one cloud that floated in my childhood sky was when I was six and was abducted, molested, and came near to being raped, by a black man in the back lobby of the Towers one warm sunny day. My exposure to blacks had been limited. There was Buckwheat on the Little Rascals, and our cleaning lady, Ada, who we adored. She would let my sister and I jump on our parents’ big double bed, while she drank my dad’s scotch and smoked my mother’s Pall Mall cigarettes.

Willie was a black handyman, about 35-years old. One day he asked me to help him with something behind the back staircase, I willingly agreed. I remember the smell of the brilliantine on his hair, the taint of his breath, his rough hands smelling of cigarettes pushing down on my mouth, his long boney fingers digging into my crotch, trying to find a way past my underpants. He had me clutched tight, for some reason I couldn’t summon the strength to fight, my eyes fixed on a brass plate.

Ruth, a white neighbor, was my savior. She walked into the dark of the lobby and called my name in a quavering, uncertain voice. “Don’t answer,” Willie hissed, but he dropped me and ran. Ruth found me crying in the hallway. The police came and for a single Sunday afternoon I was the talk of the Towers. Other than bruising on my mouth and private parts I was unharmed. Someone was really looking out for me that day, as another little girl was raped and strangled two weeks later on the roof of an apartment building on Franklin Avenue, three blocks away. Willie disappeared and was never caught.

My family moved to the suburbs and I got on with my life. But 50 years later, I can still smell Willie’s brilliantine and smoky fingers, and feel his strong boney fingers in my crotch like it was yesterday.

If you have a story about how you became racially aware, we’d like to hear it. If it is well written and compelling, we will publish it. Use a pen name, stay under 1,200 words, and send it to us here.