A Silver Golf Trophy and Prejudice

What does a silver golf trophy have to do with prejudice?

I'm not talking about the prejudice some people have against the scent of hyacinths. Really, some people hate it.

I happen to love their scent, and one gift I can count on getting from RH in February is a potted purple hyacinth.

Even if I have to remind him.

And I'm not talking about the prejudice that most designers have against keeping the pretty paper they come wrapped in.

I realize that's supposed to be removed and moss draped artistically across the top instead. 

The prejudice I'm speaking of here is one I hope no longer exists today, not in this country.

When I spotted a tarnished silver golf trophy at a thrift store a couple of years ago when we were living in Florida, I quickly put it in my basket. It was half price Saturday and only $12.

When I got home and polished it I was able to make out the inscription on it:

Beauclerc Country Club

Golf Champions

Husband-Wife

1958

Away to Google I went and discovered that the Beauclerc Country Club was a historic Jewish country club in nearby Jacksonville. 

I immediately remembered a movie starring Gregory Peck where he was a journalist assigned to cover the subject of whether there was antisemitism in New York City.

Surely not, he felt. But once he went undercover, pretending to be Jewish himself, he found it everywhere including in Darien, Connecticut, the home of his new fiancée played by Dorothy McGuire.

One scene in the movie particularly surprised me. When Peck's character tries to register at a nice hotel he finds there are suddenly no rooms available to him. 

When I began researching the history of the Beauclerc community and the country club there, I found out that it was first established because the San Jose Country Club nearby would not accept Jews for membership.

Disturbing, isn't it? 

I hope that the movie Gregory Peck starred in in 1947, Gentleman's Agreement, helped change some of the prejudices in our country then. It was nominated for eight Oscars and won Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Celeste Holmes), and Best Director (Elia Kazan).

I guess prejudices will always be with us. 

Hopefully not as much as in 1947. 


Added on 3/6/18:

I am so glad I ordered the book after posting earlier about the movie. I not only discovered an author I loved but learned so much more than the movie covered. 

The title, Gentleman's Agreement, makes sense now after learning that the unwritten agreement among wealthy Darien, Connecticut residents was that they would not sell property or houses to Jews. 

Anyone else catch the irony in this? Gentleman? What gentleman, I ask you?

However, the book also brings up the bad problem of prejudice in California at that time, only there it was "the Filipino thing and the Chinese and the Nisei and the Negro thing..."

In other words, all the people of a different skin color who were doing the actual work that white people didn't want to do. Does that sound familiar?

Prejudice is a complicated thing, isn't it? Are some prejudices not as bad as others? The author of this book, Laura Z. Hobson, also covered stories of prejudice among Jews towards other Jews, the wealthy ones who form their own "snazzy golf club" and then "blackball guys of Polish or Russian-Jewish stock. Meaning, anybody who looks good-and-Jewish."

That reminded me of stories I heard back before the Black is Beautiful movement in my early married life where African-Americans looked down on other African-Americans who had dark skin tone. Does this still exist? 

I know that even when I was in school in the early 1950s through early 60s, there were popular and unpopular kids in school, mostly because of looks or grades or economic level. That's something that I wonder will ever change. 

And I don't remember a single student in my schools being physically disabled.

All this was before the Americans With Disabilities Act. I watched a movie the other night about the man responsible for bringing about that Act and heard for the first time ever that back before the AWD Act that there was an Ugly Law--I kid you not. It gave restaurants and other businesses the legal right to refuse to serve you if you were too ugly in appearance, or too disabled. Because heaven forbid someone ugly disturbs the meals of customers.

Can. You. Imagine.

Back to the book. A conversation Phil was having with a few fellow co-workers included what I hope we would all come to feel about the only kind of prejudice any of us should have.

They brought up the question of wondering, now that Phil had completed his magazine series, "I Was A Jew for 6 Months," whether they were obliged to like all Jews, even those who behaved badly.

Sam says that he has "a God-given right to dislike any louse alive, Jewish, Mohammedan, or whatever."

They all decided that "antilousism" was an accepted -ism.

I agree, don't you? Forget every single prejudice against anyone unless they are just a no-good mean louse, whatever color or creed they come in.

Or is it prejudice to dislike a louse?

In that case I guess I'm prejudiced.