The first thing you need to know is that I was raised by racists. Hardcore racists. My mother's father was so bad that when my uncle visited him with his Puerto Rican friend in tow, he greeted them on the front porch with an aimed, loaded and cocked shotgun.
I remember being in 3rd grade and we lived on a block with a Mexican family. I used to play with the kids. One day my stepfather pulled me aside and told me if I ever married a "spic" or "nigger" he'd disown me...and it hurts to even type those words.
Imagine now, his mother and father living in a neighborhood where they were the ONLY white people in a two block radius. They had a German shepherd named Sam that was trained to attack people of the darker variety.
Nothing except fear and disgust of black and brown folks was being instilled in me.
I was, maybe, 9 or 10 and the first round of the Swine flu was wreaking havoc on America. My mom caught it and was hospitalized for weeks. While there she had a black woman as a roommate. Both of them almost died. They comforted each other through their illness. They became friends and remained so until my mom died.
She'd invited us to a family party. It might have been Labor Day or something. Marvin Gaye's Live At The London Palladium had just been released.
I remember being really uneasy about going to black folks' house, but once I got there, I found out that black folks were just, you know, folks. Like anyone else.
They played Got To Give It Up all night long. We danced and laughed and ate until I passed out in a lawn chair.
Something fundamental changed in me that night. I no longer saw it as us and them. They were people, just like me, no matter what my family may have believed. And? The more I heard the racism spew from my family's lips, the more I was disgusted with them.
Then there was my 7th grade teacher, Ivy B. She was the most socially progressive person I had ever met up until that time. She had us reading books like Black Boy and Native Son. She had us read literature from famous female writers. She wanted to expose us to the fullness of all cultures.
When I read Black Boy, I wept. I felt his pain. I felt his humiliation. I felt his RAGE.
I vowed I'd try to NEVER make another human being feel the way that young boy felt.
I didn't set out to fall in love with a black man, either. We were partners working on a private ambulance. It was just he and I for long shifts, alone with nothing to do but talk.
We fell in love and made two exceptional human beings. We lived and loved for seven years.
We were spat on. Harassed by Nation Of Islam members. Stared at in restaurants. Ignored in others. Threatened by rednecks. And we walked that walk TOGETHER.
And my empathy for people of color grew, because no one can say that as a white woman I don't, or can't, understand racism. I do. I understand it from the perspective of holding my crying children while they told me how they got off the bus only to be welcomed by swastikas. I understand it from the perspective of wiping someone's racist inspired spittle off my face. I understand the rage. I understand the inequality. I understand the frustration. I understand that most of the world wants to believe we left that shit behind with MLK Jr.
I wept the night Obama was elected the first term. I wept because, for the first time, I could HONESTLY tell my children they could be anything they wanted to be, even President.
And that's all I got to say about that.
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