Racism
My morning TV began with a PBS interview with Mat Johnson on Writing Out Loud about his book, IncogNegro.
It brought to my mind some of my early childhood experiences with racism. I decided to share some of them here, partly in the interest of detailing "The Story of My Life" and maybe partly to illustrate how it was back then, when racists were MADE... NOT born.
I was born and raised in a little white world north of Boston. I lived in an Eastern, all white, section of town called "Happy Valley". Yes, really!
When I was about 4 or 5 we took a road trip to Indiana, where my Aunt Anita lived. She had married a serviceman who's family ran soybean farm out there. Somewhere on the way, Ohio, I think, our car broke down and Dad got some road service in the middle of nowhere.
The mechanic was black. In my whole life I had never seen such a thing and I was amazed. He was beautiful! I scrunched up close to my mother and announced to her, "Look! Mummy! That man is BLACK!"
She gathered me up close to her breast and whispered, "Shhhhh! Don't say anything!" I'll never forget that moment. I'm almost 70 now and I can still feel her terror.
I know now that my mother was actually very timid, almost paranoid and her response was probably very extreme because of who and what she was, but then she was my mother and my rock, my interpreter of the world and her message was one of intense alarm. She believed that if that man heard me, he would harm us... and I got the message.
She didn't know any better... but I did even then. He came to save us, didn't he? And he did do that. It took me years to mature enough to make any sense of that experience. More on this later...