My first moment of racism (Boston Globe)

[struggle4progress]

By Joyce Pellino Crane
September 15, 2008

... By the late-1980s, I was in graduate school at Suffolk University, soon to marry a classmate who was sharing his apartment with a younger brother. The brother was dating a black woman engaged in a cat and mouse game with me. Though I was a frequent visitor to the apartment, she always left just before I arrived, and in several months of visiting, I had never set eyes on her.

I thought you were a racist, she tells me today, just before the two of us dissolve into laughter. Angela earned her medical degree at Yale and is a physician. The brother had consulted me when he was deciding to marry her, and I told him that couples have an easier time when spouses share a similar background. I couldn't hear the racism in my words back then, but when he relayed them to her, she could.

Racism can be so subtle that someone like Michelle Obama or my sister-in-law cannot always counter or confront it. The only choice is to ignore it, deny it, or spurn anyone who falls under suspicion. Almost two decades later, my sister-in-law and I no longer worry about such things. We are both single mothers, each with two teenage boys, united by life's trials. We no longer see black and white. When we greet each other, I am not surprised that her skin feels as familiar as mine.

This Fourth of July, as we shared a blanket under the starlit sky and our four boys tossed a Frisbee, I reflected on the trusting relationship we've forged. It is so unremarkable to us that I often forget to anticipate the surprised looks when the boys, whose hairstyles range from brown afro to layered blonde, are introduced as cousins. I am forced to remind myself that this familial bond is still unusual. Still, I have hope that the historic presidential campaign between Obama and John McCain will be decided on voting records, political platforms, and qualifications, rather than skin color. I like to imagine that even Jimmy, wherever he may be today, believes in the same possibilities ...

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/09/15/my_first_moment_of_racism/

[Kind of Blue]

1. Thanks for posting this.

Because with this presidential election the words of Sen. Obama, that so moved the country to do better, gets lost. This story brings the quality of his earlier speeches back to me again. I read the passage as a fairytale with its happy ending and then it hits me, it's not a fairytale. It's even better because it's real. I'm all choked up because it's my family too with just about every ethnicity and faith. At one family reunion, I asked my Anglo mother-in-law, as we watched the toddlers, the teens and young adult cousins enjoy each other, Did you ever imagine you would have great and great-grand kids of just about every shade under the sun? And she said, This family is more than I could have ever imagined. The familial bond is unusual but it's really only skin deep.