Claire,
TN,
My Big Mama said the above statement to my father. I was hanging out with two of my friends, one a white female and the other a black male. Apparently my Big Mama thought it was rather inappropriate that two young white women would go around town with a young black man. How I lived for 18 years without noticing the racism and prejudice so strongly rooted in my family, I’ll never know. I thought I belonged to a family that was accepting, loving, and far removed from the racist southern archetype. No, it was at that moment that I realized how little distance we (my family) had traversed since the Civil War. It was okay to sit in the same restaurant, or church, or doctor’s office with “them,” but it was not okay to date, marry, or have close friendships with “their kind.”
I will continue to do things that I “shouldn’t.” I will continue to be a friend and an ally to those who need me.
