On a Slow Continuum
6/8/07 12:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsI have told this story before, but I'll tell it again in honor of International Blog Against Racism Week (at the end of which week we will have ended racism as we know it, and all go out to dinner. If only.)
When I was thirteen I visited my grandmother in Los Angeles. She was, or appeared to be, a solid Republican-protestant, Iowa-born and Nebraska raised, kindly but on the politically conservative side (the sort of person who could say without irony some years later that "I never needed social security! I had Daddy!" without thinking about all the people who didn't have a well-to-do pharmacist in the background). Gran was, in her own way, a redoubtable woman: she went "east" to finishing school; later taught at a Territory school; she was a divorcee in a time and place where that was scandalous; she brought her kids to Hollywood in the early 30s, so that she could earn a living (she managed apartment buildings so they'd have a place to live). When her father died, she made a home for her mother. And despite the "I had Daddy" line, she didn't have much money until after her mother's death. She was a very smart woman, but didn't question the values with which she was raised.
So: we're driving down the street in LA; I'm thirteen, she's 72, and it's 1967. We pass a pair of small boys--African American--wrestling on their front lawn. And Grannie looks over and says "Oh, mercy, look at those little pickaninnies!" No judgment, no disapproval, just noticing the kids. She may even have been admiring their energy and excitement.
I was horrified. I was 13 years old, from Greenwich Village, had gone to a lefty-liberal school where we were told from nursery school on up that the worst thing you could do was judge another person by the color of his skin. "Grannie!" I yelped.
A little shamefaced, she turned to me and said, "Oh, leave me alone. I don't know any better."
It took me years to understand the layers of history, experience, and shame in that comment. Clearly she knew better or she would have asked me why I was upset. In this she was unlike a number of her friends who adamantly would not have understood my objection and might well have used the N-word rather than "pickaninny." But she was also born in 1895, and the world had changed hugely over her lifetime. In that moment she'd made an unguarded comment that came directly from her childhood, but the experienced woman she was did know better, and was embarrassed and shamed (in front of her 13 year old grand-daughter, no less). And forty years later I get it.
I would love to be racism-free. I don't want to think of myself as an oppressor, and I try real hard to treat people decently, and I do know better, was raised and taught to know a lot better. The best I can do is to live mindfully and, when I screw up, admit that I know better and try to do better. I hope I have, in my own way, as much grace as my grandmother did.
When I was thirteen I visited my grandmother in Los Angeles. She was, or appeared to be, a solid Republican-protestant, Iowa-born and Nebraska raised, kindly but on the politically conservative side (the sort of person who could say without irony some years later that "I never needed social security! I had Daddy!" without thinking about all the people who didn't have a well-to-do pharmacist in the background). Gran was, in her own way, a redoubtable woman: she went "east" to finishing school; later taught at a Territory school; she was a divorcee in a time and place where that was scandalous; she brought her kids to Hollywood in the early 30s, so that she could earn a living (she managed apartment buildings so they'd have a place to live). When her father died, she made a home for her mother. And despite the "I had Daddy" line, she didn't have much money until after her mother's death. She was a very smart woman, but didn't question the values with which she was raised.
So: we're driving down the street in LA; I'm thirteen, she's 72, and it's 1967. We pass a pair of small boys--African American--wrestling on their front lawn. And Grannie looks over and says "Oh, mercy, look at those little pickaninnies!" No judgment, no disapproval, just noticing the kids. She may even have been admiring their energy and excitement.
I was horrified. I was 13 years old, from Greenwich Village, had gone to a lefty-liberal school where we were told from nursery school on up that the worst thing you could do was judge another person by the color of his skin. "Grannie!" I yelped.
A little shamefaced, she turned to me and said, "Oh, leave me alone. I don't know any better."
It took me years to understand the layers of history, experience, and shame in that comment. Clearly she knew better or she would have asked me why I was upset. In this she was unlike a number of her friends who adamantly would not have understood my objection and might well have used the N-word rather than "pickaninny." But she was also born in 1895, and the world had changed hugely over her lifetime. In that moment she'd made an unguarded comment that came directly from her childhood, but the experienced woman she was did know better, and was embarrassed and shamed (in front of her 13 year old grand-daughter, no less). And forty years later I get it.
I would love to be racism-free. I don't want to think of myself as an oppressor, and I try real hard to treat people decently, and I do know better, was raised and taught to know a lot better. The best I can do is to live mindfully and, when I screw up, admit that I know better and try to do better. I hope I have, in my own way, as much grace as my grandmother did.