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A little racist
I called Mom last night to coordinate arrangements for the family wedding we're attending in Kansas City in October. She's driving so I'm planning to ride back with her to STL (thoughts and prayers, please!) and tack on a few days there.
She told me a little about the book she'd gifted me for my birthday. (When I didn't recognise the title, I assumed it was something I'd put on my wishlist and since forgotten about, but it wasn't.) Then she surprised me by asking about Toni Morrison. I happen to be reading Beloved at the moment, which I recommended to her with the caveat that it's a slavery narrative, which makes for tough reading sometimes.
"I have limited tolerance for that," she told me, "because of people I knew who had chips on their shoulders and wanted me to apologise for things my ancestors had nothing to do with."
"Our German ancestors weren't in the country back then," I told her, "but they definitely benefitted from the enslavement of African-Americans. The effects of that persisted all the way up until the 60s."
Up to today, actually, but I know that can be a harder sell for liberal Boomers like my mom who think they solved racism with the Civil Rights Act. In any case, she acknowledged the truth of that and we moved along to other things.
She also confessed something to me that she admitted to not being able to tell her daughter: That she fears for the safety of her grandsons because they attend integrated schools and have diverse friends. At first I thought she was implying that their Black schoolmates were more likely to be involved in crime, thus exposing them to more risk of violence.
But then she drew an analogy to learning I was openly gay. She used to have anxiety dreams about me being fagbashed in Chicago. So her fear is that bigots targeted POC will end up harming her grandchildren as well. I guess it never occurred to her that her grandsons' friendship with POC helps keep them more safe. (Or maybe she has considered that and it doesn't matter to her.)
So much to unpack here. I'm hoping we'll have some time during our time on the road to do it.
Speaking of Beloved, I'm in the home stretch. I got a little wobbly early on but once I finally twigged to the nature of Beloved's origins, I became more invested in the story. I've never thought of Morrison as a magical realist so I wasn't expecting so much fantasy in the narrative. It's well-integrated though.
The only inclusion that I find jarring is the discussion of "breakfast" during Paul D's captivity. It strikes me as unlikely and anachronistic given how uncommon fellatio was in the USA until relatively recently. Of course you can read it metaphorically, but there are so many documented horrors so viscerally rendered in the text I don't know why she felt the need to include this invented one.
She told me a little about the book she'd gifted me for my birthday. (When I didn't recognise the title, I assumed it was something I'd put on my wishlist and since forgotten about, but it wasn't.) Then she surprised me by asking about Toni Morrison. I happen to be reading Beloved at the moment, which I recommended to her with the caveat that it's a slavery narrative, which makes for tough reading sometimes.
"I have limited tolerance for that," she told me, "because of people I knew who had chips on their shoulders and wanted me to apologise for things my ancestors had nothing to do with."
"Our German ancestors weren't in the country back then," I told her, "but they definitely benefitted from the enslavement of African-Americans. The effects of that persisted all the way up until the 60s."
Up to today, actually, but I know that can be a harder sell for liberal Boomers like my mom who think they solved racism with the Civil Rights Act. In any case, she acknowledged the truth of that and we moved along to other things.
She also confessed something to me that she admitted to not being able to tell her daughter: That she fears for the safety of her grandsons because they attend integrated schools and have diverse friends. At first I thought she was implying that their Black schoolmates were more likely to be involved in crime, thus exposing them to more risk of violence.
But then she drew an analogy to learning I was openly gay. She used to have anxiety dreams about me being fagbashed in Chicago. So her fear is that bigots targeted POC will end up harming her grandchildren as well. I guess it never occurred to her that her grandsons' friendship with POC helps keep them more safe. (Or maybe she has considered that and it doesn't matter to her.)
So much to unpack here. I'm hoping we'll have some time during our time on the road to do it.
Speaking of Beloved, I'm in the home stretch. I got a little wobbly early on but once I finally twigged to the nature of Beloved's origins, I became more invested in the story. I've never thought of Morrison as a magical realist so I wasn't expecting so much fantasy in the narrative. It's well-integrated though.
The only inclusion that I find jarring is the discussion of "breakfast" during Paul D's captivity. It strikes me as unlikely and anachronistic given how uncommon fellatio was in the USA until relatively recently. Of course you can read it metaphorically, but there are so many documented horrors so viscerally rendered in the text I don't know why she felt the need to include this invented one.