http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1997/09/getting-touch-my-inner-racist

In this article Art Spiegelman recalls a shameful incident from his past when he’s forced to discuss racism with his children.  It’s interesting to compare this story to Vladek’s reaction to the hitchhiker.  Spiegelman admits that he used a  racial slur to intentionally offend the orderly who denied him a much needed bathroom trip. It’s difficult to say which is worse; Vladek, a survivor of the most terrible result of prejudice and intolerance, who is repelled buy the idea of picking up a black hitchhiker or Art who admits to having a black friend in his youth and who grew up in a more progressive time calling someone a name he knows will wound them. Spiegelman doesn’t try to romanticize his father’s identity in Maus and in this article he doesn’t try to sugar-coat his own bad behavior.