by guest contributor Rachel Sullivan, originally published at Rachel’s Tavern
I remember an argument I had with my mother a few years back. I had brought my boyfriend, a black man, who I had been dating for 4 years, to a family picnic. At the picnic, my grandfather and his wife refused to shake my ex-boyfriend’s hand because he was black. I knew something like this was going to happen, as my maternal extended relatives had made numerous bigoted comments going back to my childhood. I felt terrible for putting my ex in that situation, and I felt terrible that nobody in my family stood up and said something. They pretended like nothing happened. I was sobbing and furious, and he and I left the picnic soon after. We stopped at a fast food place, and he said, “I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before. I’m so glad we left.” I was glad to be gone, too.
After leaving I had an over the phone discussion with my mother, where my mother suggested that it was unfortunate that we left because my young cousins were crying. They liked and missed my ex and could not figure out why he had left. Her tone suggested that my ex and I were responsible for my cousins being upset, and perhaps, if we came back, they would stop crying. I remember being furious with my mother’s reaction, and I blurted out, “They should be upset. Racism hurts people. The fact that they are crying is a good thing. Hopefully, when they grow up, they will remember this so they don’t ever treat people that way.”
Later that evening, my mother and some of my aunts and cousins who felt bad about the situation came over to my apartment. I guess it was their way to try to make up for not saying anything at the picnic. They brought my younger cousins, so they could actually talk to my ex and hopefully feel better. At some point, they tried to tell me how my grandfather felt uncomfortable, and he felt like everybody was looking to see what he would do, and he made the claim that this was why he and his wife refused to shake hands. They also reminded me that my grandfather was notorious for being an abrasive person outside of his racism. But I wasn’t having it. To me this was all bullshit. Racist bullshit. Yes, he had been an asshole on other occasions, but this time he was a racist asshole.
I had listened to him and some other relatives in my extended family say pejorative things about blacks and Latinos for years. These offensive comments ranged from using the word nigger, to talking about lazy “colored” people, and making all kinds of statements about Mexican migrant farmworkers. It was rare for anybody but me to challenge this, and I didn’t even do it every time. In fact, it reached a point where people didn’t saying these things around me anymore because they knew I would get mad.1
The next Christmas my father and brother showed their solidarity with my ex (and me) by refusing to attend any events that my maternal grandfather attended.
I half forgave my grandfather and his wife even thought they never apologized and most likely they weren’t sorry for what they did. I’m not exactly sure how my ex dealt with this in the long run. By the time I saw my grandfather again, about 2 years later, I was no longer is that relationship. I had recently found out my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, and I sat at the table and bit my tongue, while trying my best to act friendly. I know my mother, who felt torn over these events, was happy to see me sitting at that table, and I cheered when I saw him again 6 months later, and he announced his cancer had gone into remission. But I can’t lie. I was happy to be living very far away from him; I knew I didn’t have to confront this issue over and over again.
In my first month in New York, he suffered a severe stroke and heart attack. He suffered a great deal for a month or two, and then he passed away. I was sad that he died, and part of that sadness was with the fact that he never confronted any of the pain he visited on others. That racist incident defined my relationship with him over the last few years of his life. It’s really hard to remember the jokes he made when I was a child, before I knew or understood the depth of his bigotry.
This incident didn’t only change my view of him; it still lingers in the background of the relationships with many of my relatives. Some people may believe the lesson in this story is that you should make up with your loved ones before they die, but I don’t see it that way. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t want to expend any more emotional energy fighting an uphill battle. It would have been nice to get an apology for my ex and myself, but the odds of that happening were slim. To me, the lesson is that racism destroys relationships. It makes, otherwise decent people, turn a blind eye to suffering. The theory that says many white people don’t care about racism because it doesn’t effect them or their loved ones makes sense until you realize that in many cases loved ones are either perpetrators or inactive bystanders when racism is directed at their loved ones.
Racism is so insidious that it anesthetizes people to suffering of others (even others who they care about). It destroys empathetic reactions to human suffering. The victims of racism are expected to be the “bigger people” while the perpetrators get the “Get Out of Racism Free” card. Even when they know racist behavior is wrong and harmful, many white observers of racism suffer from moral paralysis. Rather than doing what is morally right, they do nothing.2
Moral paralysis is learned. It is not something that you are born with. This is actually why I was happy that my little cousins were crying when we left that picnic. Even though they didn’t quite know what was going on or why this situation was bad, it showed me that they hadn’t quite learned to be immune the suffering that racism causes. I hope, nearly 10 years later, they still get upset in those situations. I hope they have the courage to respond to bigots inside and outside our family. It may be the more difficult path to take (as I can attest to), but it’s the right one.
1. I’d like to think that some stopped because they had a change of heart, but I’m not so convinced.
2. I’m not saying that it is easy for people who observe racist behavior to speak out. In these cases of family racism, there are often long protracted battles where people choose sides, which is not easy to do when you love someone but don’t love their behavior. Personally, I chose to withdraw rather than lobby for support. Partly, because I knew I was right; partly because I had been fighting on this issue for years prior to this; and partly because I didn’t expect to get too much support. In fact, I suspect that the amount of sympathy my partner and I received would have been inversely related to how much lobbying we did.
*sigh* As someone who has been “the black girlfriend” several times in the past, I feel for you and your ex. For what it’s worth, your family isn’t singular; in fact, in my experience there are many families who are “not racist” until one of their kids start dating outside of their race.
And frankly? Even as I sit here in my interracial marriage with my multiracial kid, I don’t think it’s going to get better anytime soon.
Rachel, I wonder at the insistence on placing yourself and your politics at the front of the line, ahead of your experience and knowledge of the temperaments of a crowd/family member/group of people.
I *suppose* the idea that one’s family is not committed to the mean-spirited and bigoted things they are known to have said, that the battle between the goodness of the love they feel for you and the derisive hatefulness inherent in prejudiced speech about your company, would find your family’s love, and honor of that love, triumphant, could have been at work in this situation.
Had you hoped to win out, and in the process, witness a quiet transformation or unwitting growth of your grandfather?
I understand the desire of youth to place its hopes and dreams, its love and ideals, central to its hopes for the way the world should work.
Still…now that you are older. Now that we all are wiser…
Kim, I can’t speak for Rachel, but sometimes it’s not about placing yourself and your politics at the front of the line; it’s about living your life.
I have a similar story, except instead of the racism being directed at my boyfriend, it was directed at my child. And NOBODY stood up for us. Privately, they apologized for Grandpa’s behavior (it was my husband’s grandfather) , and agreed that he was a racist jerk. But nobody confronted him, and every single one of them went to Christmas dinner with him. We never spoke to Grandpa again.
Rachel, this was an extremely thought-provoking piece. Thank you.
Kim labels the expectation for all people to be treated with dignity and respect as “politics.” That labeling is racism, pure and simple.
Kim: The thing is, we all want to think the best of our families, and I think in Rachel’s case, she had reason to think that her mother, aunts/cousins, etc. would be on her side, and that her grandfather would at least stay out of their way.
There’s also a disparity between what people say around close family and how they act in public. I’ve heard racist/sexist/homophobic things from members of my own family, and I know that when they’re out on the street they show none of those attitudes. I’m guessing Rachel thought that her extended family would have the common sense and courtesy to put their public face on, to “out on the dog,” as my mother would say.
Honestly, for lots of people in IRs, if there’s grey area in how different family members react to you (and if they’re not consistant from one gettogether to another), you don’t get to pick the moral high ground all the time. Sometimes, you just want to go to the family picnic with everyone else, and you think, this time, everything will be fine. We may even have relatives assuring us that everything will be fine. Sometimes entire events pass without incident, and you start to think, “They’re OK, they’re growing, and maybe I was exaggerating, they’re not that bad…”
Until the next time. And when this time something happens, whether it’s a range of incidents, or one careless expression or joke, it crashes down that framework of support that’s supposed to come with being with family.
Sorry – the phrase is “PUT on the dog.” Not that that makes any more sense, but that’s what my momma says…
Yes, I know that we expect things from family that honor the love they have for us, as I spoke to.
I just don’t expect people who have stated, or shown, nasty inclinations and predispositions regarding a group or type of person, to “transform” before my eyes.
Calif. Mama: You’ve got to be kidding. The power in that situation, externally, lay with the Grandfather, and with Rachel.
The young man had to flex his internal muscle, and display a dignity and calm that allowed him graceful and timely exit from a situation to which he had been invited.
I do not condemn Rachel, but muse that we (humans) place hope above experience, and then get really hurt when things don’t go the way of our hearts.
This was not a public event, but a safe gathering of family, and thereby, a private event in a public setting. Many of the same dynamics that exist in the home were on display at the event.
Rachel suggests that some may infer from her tale that the moral is to forgive family members for transgressions before it is too late. I suspect the reason no one here has expressed that yes, that is the moral, could be that we know we each play a part in a relationship, and the old notions of ‘forgive and forget’ have taken on a more seasoned examination, and we know that no blanket statement would cover all transgressions.
I think a more seasoned adult than the ten-year-ago Rachel would act differently today with a mate. As would most of us…placing that mate’s (emotional and psychological) safety and well-being paramount to the discomfiting and sometimes threatening interactions with our sometimes-unsavory familial intimates.
Thank you for a thoughtful essay on family and prejudice. I am 60 and am appalled at my family in talking generalities about groups of people and forwarding e-mails (political) but that put down groups. I am the mother-in-law of a beautiful human being who is black and is a good and responsible husband, father, brother, son, businessman. We are proud of him, our daughter, our grandson. And in gently confronting racism within my family, I have had to give up relationships. Yes, I would hope that there would be dialog, but gentle reminders have only shut down communication from them completely. The quandary is how to be a light within the family…a spark of light is bright in the darkness of racism.
Pingback: What Price, Peace? « Land of the Not-So-Calm
Thank you for sharing your story Rachel. I confronted my grandfather about his racism recently. It tears me apart to hear the hateful opinions that he shares with many of his friends. I don’t know how this will affect our relationship yet, but I feel that I have stayed silent for far too long.
Thank you Rachel for a very poignant and true to life article. Your writing is a collection of astute observations and human emotion tempered with compassion and reason. It is bittersweet to see that someone else has shared experiences of racism and thoughtless bigotry that I can relate to.
****Kim said, ” I think a more seasoned adult than the ten-year-ago Rachel would act differently today with a mate. As would most of us…placing that mate’s (emotional and psychological) safety and well-being paramount to the discomfiting and sometimes threatening interactions with our sometimes-unsavory familial intimates.”*****
I think I have something to say to you in agreement or in argument, but I’m not sure. Could you please condescend to follow the old rule: never use a big word when a diminuitive one will suffice.
I really see Kim’s point. The example in my family comes from a different kind of prejudice.
My uncle was gay- my grandparents were Baptists. For who they were, they accepted him as much as they could, they didn’t kick him out of the family, they acknowledged that he was gay, they still loved him, they included his “News from LA” in their Christmas newsletters they sent, but from his perspective, they were awful, small-minded prejudiced people.
My uncle was upset that my Grandma didn’t want him to wear blue nail polish in the family picture. He sent a book of male nudes that he was in to my grandparents. They did not acknowledge the gift. For these and similar slights, my uncle could not forgive his parents. [Rachael, these slights really did hurt my uncle and are a similar level of unkindness, in my opinion, to your grandfather not shaking your boyfriends hand.]
From my perspective, my grandparents were still prejudiced against gay people, but they really made a huge effort to accept their son. You have to give people some credit for the distance they have traveled to get somewhere and not just where they have gotten to.
My uncle eventually refused to talk to his parents. This broke my Grandma’s heart. Then he refused to talk to all of us. When my Grandma died, he didn’t come to the funeral.
People are not perfect, and if someone is being cruel to you, then you have to get away from them, but if they are making an effort, maybe you can understand things from their perspective a little.
When my uncle was dying of aids, we went to the hospital and then to the hospice and spent months with him. That was our reconcilliation. I still love my uncle and miss him very much, but I wish he had hadn’t been so moralistic with my grandparents. I do wish he had made up with my Grandmother before she died.
I don’t think its fair to expect people from another time to instantly adopt your modern morals. Even if you are totally right.
I have very mixed feelings about Braidwood’s comment. While I do think it shows effort when people try to be accepting, one should not have to settle for conditional acceptance. This kind acceptance, as shown by the parents of the gay uncle, still carries a deep message that one who is different is not acceptable as is. This causes a great deal of pain, as we all long for love and acceptance for who we are, not for who we are expected to be.
Maree B…I completely agree with you!
I once dated a guy whose family and friends couldn’t see beyond the color of my skin. His mother was very prejudiced and it showed in the way she interacted with me. There were times I would catch her looking at me with contempt, like she hated me.
You said: “This causes a great deal of pain, as we all long for love and acceptance for who we are, not for who we are expected to be”.
This. That is so true. Years after that relationship has ended and despite being married to a wonderful man, I still carry a lot of sadness because of how I was treated. I still struggle to understand why certain things happened and why I continued to stay in that situation.
At one point, my ex had a female friend who called me the “N” word in his presence. He did not defend me. That’s when I knew that we were finished.
I just had a sort of similar run-in with my grandfather. He has always been a miserable man, and I have accepted that. but finally I can not take it anymore because I feel like he has attacked my child personally.
You see I always knew he was racist deep down, but it had never come up. Now I am 8 months pregnant with a beautiful mixed baby boy, and instead of being supportive and happy, he is being awful. He implied that a black man and a white man impregnating someone before mariage were two entirely different things…funny, seeing as my mother was born out of wedlock. But to him, because my baby is half black, it’s a whole different story and the father is a whole different kind of monster (and he is, simply for the fact that he is an awful person) for the simple fact that he is black. He also told me he warned me about this once, but I didn’t want to listen.
So I literally walked away from the conversation and out of the house as soon as he said “I won’t give you any pity”…which I never asked for. I can’t decide if I feel bad for walking out and saying “I never asked you for pity. I asked you to stop being a racist”, because he is old, but this baby is almost here and I don’t want any of that attitude in his life.