By 1981, I was dating a Black woman and she wanted to meet my parents. You always get a picture of how someone might age when you look at the parents. She had invited me to Thanksgiving weekend that year to stay at her parents house. I liked the way her mother looked and I projected it on how my girlfriend would age.
By 1981, I was dating a Black woman and she wanted to meet my parents. You always get a picture of how someone might age when you look at the parents. She had invited me to Thanksgiving weekend that year to stay at her parents house. I liked the way her mother looked and I projected it on how my girlfriend would age.
She wanted to meet my parents and I knew I was in for an experience. When I told my mother, she told me that my friend just wanted to better her social standing by dating me. But I explained that she was from upper middle class and I was from lower middle class. She then mentioned that our future children would be the ones that would get hurt. I then left her with a question; “But who am I.” My mother was Italian American and she married into an orthodox Jewish family. My friend wanted to meet my father and I knew that it would go much worse. I waited for when he was alone in the house and I approached him and told him I had been dated a Black woman and I wanted to bring her over. He launched into the not unexpected tirade belittling me as a failure in life. I waited for him to finish. I then asked quietly, “Are you finished?” I then with equal calmness told him not to expect me to come crying on his deathbed. I calmly opened the kitchen door and gently closed it. A true Shakespearian exit. It was the last time I spoke to him. In one year he was dead of a massive heart attach. I felt relieved.
My heart aches reading your story, which I can appreciate because of my own story. Thank you for opening the door now . . . stories can help people heal and we never know how, when, or where.
Thank you. As a writer with a small “w,” I seek to open doors of memory and experience in my life. One moment, one can find acceptance in a particular subject and the next moment, especially upon politically self-critiquing, an unacceptable attitude materializes. It goes with the clam chowder.
Heather, the ever historian scholar, has 10 primary sources studied for this one story. I read only one — Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech. Wow. Lengthy. I praise her ability to examine and write. I’m glad I’m just an occasional satirist and fun poker. I could never delve so deep as Heather does.
The internet has opened up our ability to access historical documents like never before. I love reading the text of speeches, old newspapers etc. The first hand stuff is really enlightening!
I married a Spanish man (Puerto Rican) and had a daughter with him. My parents loved him. Alas, it didn't last, mainly because we were both so young. But, reading about racism lately, I feel blessed I had the mom I did. I was born in Louisiana (my dad was stationed at Fort Polk). My mom came home to CT when I was three months old. She hated the south.
The south certainly has its own history and orientation toward Black people, but if you ask a Black person living in the North, Midwest and West they can tell you about about how racism was (is) practiced in those areas.
Oh I know this. My mom hated the weather in Louisiana, and she was homesick. She was just 20 years old. I'm happy she moved back because I like CT. If I had grown up in Louisiana instead, I would have liked it there. I'm not the best at getting my thoughts in the written word. I either tend to write too much, or as in this case, not enough. Thank you for responding.
This is very much an overlooked point. I believe we face the challenge of de-segregation of the heart. My sense, as vicious as Southern racism can be, there is more of a humanity to its regional culture, now diluted by modernity. The South may end up showing the North the way.
Before, and preparing me for, the inevitable cascade of disclaimers and virtue signalling, permit me to say that, absolutely, the right side won The Great Civil War; as a 'ute', I was a Yankee still fighting the war.
Many events define our history, often toward the bereavement of what might have been. For me two of the most consequential, in this respect, are the assassinations of President Lincoln and Senator Kennedy a little over a century apart.
Would you care to remember that Ahmed Arbery was murdered in February 2020 and the local cops decided not to press charges even though they knew who killed him until April?
How about Sandra Bland who was stopped for failure to signal and ended up dead in her cell from hanging.
Or a hundred other stories, very often in the South, where black people end up in jail or dead and no one cares.
If you would like to call that "humanity" I wonder what the hell you call the Holocaust.
Okay, I nerded out. Anything after the 'BLUF' is totally optional. By the way, ¿are you the college buddette of my high-school bud, John C. (at UPENN)?
🤞
B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up-front): I am expressing a personal intuition and do not have the empirical evidence to back it up directly. So my conclusion is tentatively valid at best; quite wrong at worst.
✍️
I tried to find a break-down of police shootings and hate crimes of Blacks and Hispanics by state or region. The best I could do, for a quick check, was using the F.B.I. hate crime data based upon "Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry" for two sets of states.
Ten outside the South: Arizona, Caliporno, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington (state). This group had recorded 4,214 hate crimes in 2022 on a population of 68.7 million people.
Thirteen 'Southern' states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Cawlina, Oklahoma, Sahth Cawlina, Tennessee, Tejas, and Virginia. This group recorded 2,472 hate crimes on a population of 68.4 million people.
😱
While the non-Southern states had 0.5% more people than the Southern states, in 2022, they endured roughly 70% more hate crimes for that year. Obviously, these data have certain weaknesses (e.g., ethnic not racial mix of the hate crimes and unequal levels of transparency and willingness to designate certain crimes as hate crimes). Just a broad first cut.
🤔
My remark was (and is) based upon personal experience -- of living in PA, NY, and AL -- and not direct empirical evidence. So, I could be wrong in my take on the more agrarian culture of the South versus the more mercantile culture of the North, both of which have diluted over the last two or three generations.
😢
Anecdotally, I relied upon Reverend Dr King's quote, "I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I had never seen, even in Mississippi, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as in Chicago . . . When we had our open housing marches many of our white liberal friends cried out in horror and dismay: 'You are creating hatred and hostility in the white communities in which you are marching. You are only developing a white backlash.' They failed to realize that the hatred and the hostilities were already latently or subconsciously present. Our marches merely brought them to the surface."
😳
Lastly, I also recalled the influences of two books -- 'The Other America' (Harrington; 1962) and 'How to Read the Constitution and Why' (Wehle; 2018) -- that discussed marginalization in the former and the steadiness of segregation in Northern areas since, I believe, 1980 in the latter. These various sources obviously do not make for a full picture and I may be giving way to confirmation bias. That intuition has been around since I went to college in rural Virginia many moons ago.
Bill-Racism itself is an insidious dis-ease that infects all of us. It’s longstanding. Like your dad most people don’t even know why they harbor racial prejudice and hate. It’s too bad he let his dis-ease come between you.
Kudos to you for being willing to date someone outside of your “race”.
I agree. It goes back generations. It's just something some people are. I sincerely try to look at people as humans. That is what we all are. We are all born, and we will all die. Some of us are good, others are mostly good; some are bad and some are plain evil. But, you can't tell who is who by race or nationality or the color of a person's skin. It can't be done, yet it's done everywhere. Racism runs deep.
To me, treating racism is like putting the plug in the jug. It is a daily discipline. I will almost certainly not be free of racism; I have accepted that. What I can be free of is giving a voice, a gesture, or an attitude.
By 1981, I was dating a Black woman and she wanted to meet my parents. You always get a picture of how someone might age when you look at the parents. She had invited me to Thanksgiving weekend that year to stay at her parents house. I liked the way her mother looked and I projected it on how my girlfriend would age.
She wanted to meet my parents and I knew I was in for an experience. When I told my mother, she told me that my friend just wanted to better her social standing by dating me. But I explained that she was from upper middle class and I was from lower middle class. She then mentioned that our future children would be the ones that would get hurt. I then left her with a question; “But who am I.” My mother was Italian American and she married into an orthodox Jewish family. My friend wanted to meet my father and I knew that it would go much worse. I waited for when he was alone in the house and I approached him and told him I had been dated a Black woman and I wanted to bring her over. He launched into the not unexpected tirade belittling me as a failure in life. I waited for him to finish. I then asked quietly, “Are you finished?” I then with equal calmness told him not to expect me to come crying on his deathbed. I calmly opened the kitchen door and gently closed it. A true Shakespearian exit. It was the last time I spoke to him. In one year he was dead of a massive heart attach. I felt relieved.
My heart aches reading your story, which I can appreciate because of my own story. Thank you for opening the door now . . . stories can help people heal and we never know how, when, or where.
Thank you. As a writer with a small “w,” I seek to open doors of memory and experience in my life. One moment, one can find acceptance in a particular subject and the next moment, especially upon politically self-critiquing, an unacceptable attitude materializes. It goes with the clam chowder.
Heather, the ever historian scholar, has 10 primary sources studied for this one story. I read only one — Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech. Wow. Lengthy. I praise her ability to examine and write. I’m glad I’m just an occasional satirist and fun poker. I could never delve so deep as Heather does.
The internet has opened up our ability to access historical documents like never before. I love reading the text of speeches, old newspapers etc. The first hand stuff is really enlightening!
I married a Spanish man (Puerto Rican) and had a daughter with him. My parents loved him. Alas, it didn't last, mainly because we were both so young. But, reading about racism lately, I feel blessed I had the mom I did. I was born in Louisiana (my dad was stationed at Fort Polk). My mom came home to CT when I was three months old. She hated the south.
The south certainly has its own history and orientation toward Black people, but if you ask a Black person living in the North, Midwest and West they can tell you about about how racism was (is) practiced in those areas.
Racism is nationwide and worldwide.
Oh I know this. My mom hated the weather in Louisiana, and she was homesick. She was just 20 years old. I'm happy she moved back because I like CT. If I had grown up in Louisiana instead, I would have liked it there. I'm not the best at getting my thoughts in the written word. I either tend to write too much, or as in this case, not enough. Thank you for responding.
You do fine in collecting and articulating your thoughts.
This is very much an overlooked point. I believe we face the challenge of de-segregation of the heart. My sense, as vicious as Southern racism can be, there is more of a humanity to its regional culture, now diluted by modernity. The South may end up showing the North the way.
Before, and preparing me for, the inevitable cascade of disclaimers and virtue signalling, permit me to say that, absolutely, the right side won The Great Civil War; as a 'ute', I was a Yankee still fighting the war.
Many events define our history, often toward the bereavement of what might have been. For me two of the most consequential, in this respect, are the assassinations of President Lincoln and Senator Kennedy a little over a century apart.
Would you care to remember that Ahmed Arbery was murdered in February 2020 and the local cops decided not to press charges even though they knew who killed him until April?
How about Sandra Bland who was stopped for failure to signal and ended up dead in her cell from hanging.
Or a hundred other stories, very often in the South, where black people end up in jail or dead and no one cares.
If you would like to call that "humanity" I wonder what the hell you call the Holocaust.
Bridget,
Okay, I nerded out. Anything after the 'BLUF' is totally optional. By the way, ¿are you the college buddette of my high-school bud, John C. (at UPENN)?
🤞
B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up-front): I am expressing a personal intuition and do not have the empirical evidence to back it up directly. So my conclusion is tentatively valid at best; quite wrong at worst.
✍️
I tried to find a break-down of police shootings and hate crimes of Blacks and Hispanics by state or region. The best I could do, for a quick check, was using the F.B.I. hate crime data based upon "Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry" for two sets of states.
https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/state-data
Ten outside the South: Arizona, Caliporno, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington (state). This group had recorded 4,214 hate crimes in 2022 on a population of 68.7 million people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population
Thirteen 'Southern' states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Cawlina, Oklahoma, Sahth Cawlina, Tennessee, Tejas, and Virginia. This group recorded 2,472 hate crimes on a population of 68.4 million people.
😱
While the non-Southern states had 0.5% more people than the Southern states, in 2022, they endured roughly 70% more hate crimes for that year. Obviously, these data have certain weaknesses (e.g., ethnic not racial mix of the hate crimes and unequal levels of transparency and willingness to designate certain crimes as hate crimes). Just a broad first cut.
🤔
My remark was (and is) based upon personal experience -- of living in PA, NY, and AL -- and not direct empirical evidence. So, I could be wrong in my take on the more agrarian culture of the South versus the more mercantile culture of the North, both of which have diluted over the last two or three generations.
😢
Anecdotally, I relied upon Reverend Dr King's quote, "I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I had never seen, even in Mississippi, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as in Chicago . . . When we had our open housing marches many of our white liberal friends cried out in horror and dismay: 'You are creating hatred and hostility in the white communities in which you are marching. You are only developing a white backlash.' They failed to realize that the hatred and the hostilities were already latently or subconsciously present. Our marches merely brought them to the surface."
😳
Lastly, I also recalled the influences of two books -- 'The Other America' (Harrington; 1962) and 'How to Read the Constitution and Why' (Wehle; 2018) -- that discussed marginalization in the former and the steadiness of segregation in Northern areas since, I believe, 1980 in the latter. These various sources obviously do not make for a full picture and I may be giving way to confirmation bias. That intuition has been around since I went to college in rural Virginia many moons ago.
Bill-Racism itself is an insidious dis-ease that infects all of us. It’s longstanding. Like your dad most people don’t even know why they harbor racial prejudice and hate. It’s too bad he let his dis-ease come between you.
Kudos to you for being willing to date someone outside of your “race”.
I agree. It goes back generations. It's just something some people are. I sincerely try to look at people as humans. That is what we all are. We are all born, and we will all die. Some of us are good, others are mostly good; some are bad and some are plain evil. But, you can't tell who is who by race or nationality or the color of a person's skin. It can't be done, yet it's done everywhere. Racism runs deep.
To me, treating racism is like putting the plug in the jug. It is a daily discipline. I will almost certainly not be free of racism; I have accepted that. What I can be free of is giving a voice, a gesture, or an attitude.