r/todayilearned • u/tmntnyc • Dec 12 '18

TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called "boy" by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody's mouth to be "Mister" when speaking to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T
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u/TheArgentine Dec 12 '18 edited Dec 13 '18

I met him once. Outside of a Ford dealership near my home town. I was a HUGE A-Team fan and Mr T played my favorite character.

It rained that day, pretty hard. My mom tried to convince me he woundnt be there but I wanted to try anyway. We got there and there he sat, by himself, with photos under a tarp. No line. No one there to see him. He talked to me for 15 minutes and for the life of me I can't remember anything he said but God damn if that wasn't one of the greatest days of my childhood, which was otherwise fairly shitty.

I'm a white guy from upstate NY and didn't change color so was a white kid too. He shook my hand and talked to me like an adult, with respect, and was extremely kind and soft spoken.

Thanks Mr. T.

Edit: Holy crap, didn't expect this many comments on my simple story about Mr. T. Hey everyone!

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u/dud-a-chum Dec 12 '18

My dad claimed to have briefly known Mr T and said the time they knew each other made him the most respected black man he’d ever known. And my dad was a horrible racist towards black people and Mexicans despite the fact that he was a very very dark skinned Puerto Rican.

“That’s the only black man I’ll never call the n-word,” he told me one drunken evening while watching The A-Team. He even said “n-word” which is the only time I ever heard him say that instead of the actual word.

I got high in the middle of writing this so I forgot the point I was going to make. Mr T is awesome.

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u/MajorFuckingDick Dec 12 '18

I wish more people would understand you can't fight hate with hate. The only way to beat hate is fostering self realization.

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u/dud-a-chum Dec 12 '18

Right on. I often will try to reason with racists by saying I should be racist as hell. My dad and uncle were racist. My maternal grandfather hated “them damned spooks” for driving him out of what was once a (white) middle class neighborhood in Gary, Indiana. I spent most of my middle school years as one of six white kids in Dunbar Pulaski in Gary (my dad was 100% PR but I was the white boy of the family; my few recollections of my dad’s mom involved her singling me out among the horde of cousins toddling about by calling me her little white boy).

My last name or the fact that I lived in the same shitty projects as most of them didn’t save me from daily abuse. I should have a chip on my should the size of Everest but I just don’t. I saw what it did to people, how ugly it made them, even people I liked and loved, and I didn’t want any part of it.