grandfather Archives - Page 2 of 3 - The Race Card Project

My Family Well Kept Secret Revealed

April 1, 2020February 21, 2021 aunt, Cherokee, Family, first experience, GA, grandfather, looked different, Mary F. Howard, Native American, proud, represent, reveal, secret, Stockbridge, Uncle

Mary F. Howard,
Stockbridge, GA.

I discovered I am one-fourth Native American. My paternal grandfather is full blood Cherokee. I just learned several months ago by eavesdropping on a conversation about race between my paternal uncle and aunt. They had just learned of additional children by their father outside of the marriage. It has often been the joke my mother had relations with a white man who fathered my brother. Now it is obvious why my brother skin looks white. Our father is fifty percent Cherokee Indian and fifty percent black. Both my father and brother Native American genes are dominant. As a child, I grew up wondering why my brother looked different. If we had the same father, why was my skin darker? My experience of race as a child is very different. Growing up my best friend name Rebecca was white. I could sleep over her house, but she could never sleep over my house. We lived four houses from each other and yet we lived in different worlds. I am proud of my life experience. It represents who I am has a person.

White supremacy I win needs dismantiling

November 13, 2019 Capeup, change, generations, Germantown, grandfather, grandson, Ken Woodward, MD, mixed race, South

Ken Woodward,
Germantown, MD

I’m a 49-year-old white male. I have primarily lived oblivious to the pervasiveness of white supremacy and mostly denied its existence. I raised a mixed race step-grandson from a 4 months old to now 24 years old.

Two years ago I started my journey into understanding the world of People of Color. Reading/listening to diverse authors, listening to different podcasts and asking people who look different than me about their lived experience.

This journey has upended my understanding of my American history, its venerable heroes, and the recognition the racial disparity, we encounter today, has been systematically built to benefit a particular group. I am this group.

During a trip home from North Carolina this week, I had to take a detour off I-95 after crossing into Virginia. I passed the remnants of a cotton crop on the edge of a field. All I could think of is the suffering this fluffy fruit delivered upon so many people; slave, master, and country. I then returned to the highway only to be welcomed by a horribly majestic Confederate flag billowing in the wind. Jefferson Davis said, “My pride is that that flag shall not set between contending brothers; and that, when it shall no longer be the common flag of the country, it shall be folded up and laid away like a vesture no longer used.”

The white man says, “what race problem, look how far we have come.” The black man says, “there is a race problem, see how far we have to go.”

Last month was the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slave in America. We continue to pay the price for how this horrific practice shapes our thinking and policies.

I have benefitted from this history and want to do what I can to dismantle the very structures that have given me this privilege. I never owned a slave, but I still reap the rewards of that system. Without shaming my white brothers and sisters, let’s work to give our children’s generation the gift of true equality.

Change hurts, but not changing hurts for generations.

Grandfather would not teach Mom Cherokee.

May 13, 2019May 13, 2019 Cherokee, grandfather, Jonathan Dearman, mom, OK, teach, Wagoner

Jonathan Dearman,
Wagoner, OK.

Overcoming obstacles does not mean “privileged”

March 19, 2019March 19, 2019 father, grandfather, hard, obsticles, overcoming, privileged, worked

White does not mean privileged. My grandfather grew up one room house with no electricity and an outhouse.
My father worked hard so we didn’t have to.

My father endearingly calls us “Cottonpicker.”

March 12, 2019March 12, 2019 cottonpickers, father, grandfather, Old Man Bass, slave-owner, Texas, TX

Thais
TX

My father, age 83, born in a small town in northern Louisiana, has always called my siblings, cousins, and I “Cottonpicker.” My father is the grandson of “Old Man Bass”–as they referred to him, a slaveowner, and Grandma Meli, short of Amelia, an enslaved African-American woman who lived to see freedom. Grandma Meli had several children by Old Man Bass, one of which was my grandfather Elisha. Elisha was born years after slavery ended. Many of the African-American men or shall I say “colored” men in his era had no other choice but to be sharecroppers. But my grandfather and his wife Rosa, owned 80 acres in Louisiana where they primarily harvested cotton–one of slavery’s trademarks. My father was #11 of 14 children born to Elisha and Rosa. The family fled from Louisiana to Oklahoma for safety, after an altercation between my father’s older brothers and a white man who mistreated their mother, Rosa. My father, Dorris, was just months old when they left. A few years later, the family moved to central California, better known as Chowchilla, CA, in hopes of making a better living. One might think, they escaped cottonpicking. But as my father tells it, there was more cotton in California, than in Mississippi or Louisiana. My father woke early to tend to the farm animals. After school he’d pick cotton. And lots of it. He picked cotton from a young boy to the age of about 25. Even at that age, any money he earned, was handed all over to this mother. One day, he got tired of picking cotton. He up and moved to Pasadena, CA along with his wife and two children, who lived with him on this parents farm. He eventually landed a job working as a construction worker for the city of L.A. for over 30 years. He tells about how when a white man was hired, it was his duty to train him–and then a week or two later, that white man would become his boss. He is retired now. His voice still rings in my ears, while playing with cousins out at the family reunions, “Come here you little cottonpickers!” And we all ran to his lap. I had no idea until I was in my 20’s that he was calling me, what some might consider “a little slave.”

My grandfather passed. Now what?

June 17, 2018June 17, 2018 generation, grandfather, Ithaca, NY

Caroline
Ithaca, NY

My great grandfather changed his name

June 17, 2018June 17, 2018 Bob, change, grandfather, grandmother, name, PA, Philadelphia

Bob,
Philadelphia, PA.

We lost our culture to survive.

June 17, 2018June 17, 2018 Brianne Hittenberger, cousin, culture, German, grandfather, last name, lost, racial slur, USA, World War II

Brianne Hittenberger,
USA.

It is the end of me, and I of it. My German last name belongs to me, my disabled brother, and my female second-cousin. My brother and I do not necessarily expect that we will marry, or that our cousin will keep our name if she does. When my brother and I die, our family line will not. My great-uncle’s three sons have stepchildren and daughters. My father’s brother has a daughter with a son. My father’s sisters have sons, three Conaways and two Ortizes, who have two Ortiz sisters from my uncle’s first marriage. My distinctly all-American grandfather will turn eighty next year, healthier, fitter, and a better driver than myself. In sixty years, he’s barely changed, still the blue-eyed athlete, the loyal Republican, the bass in the barbershop quartet, the husband who built white picket fences for his family. All the grandchildren long for his good health to be our parents’, and ours. However, he does not speak German. He is trilingual, equal parts good-humored and charming in English, French, and Haitian Creole, languages he passed down to my father, uncle, and aunts, the latter of whom are fluent in these and in Spanish. However, they do not speak German. Nobody’s spoken German since my great-grandmother, Elsie, passed away. Immigrants who barely escaped World War II in their own country, my great-grandparents did not teach their native language to my grandfather. Germans were frequently assaulted with slurs and broken windows, even Germans who left before the NAZIs came to power.

I don’t know their motives, or what my grandfather thinks about his heritage. Except the blond waves he passed on to me more than any other grandchild, there is nothing I know to be German about him. Except that stupid name. Hittenberger may have been Hüttenberger, “people of the hills,” before Elsie met Ellis Island; or, it may have always been Hittenberger. We’ve found Austrian business owners who are Hittenbergers through snuck snatches of glances of Google searches. Our homeland is part of Austria now. We are not connected to it, however, or anyone. That name is all my great-grandparents allowed us to keep.
I will never know its importance; except that it is, and I am, here today.

Grandfather: Hebrew Father: Israelite Daughter: White

April 15, 2018April 15, 2018 Arlington, daughter, father, generation, grandfather, Hebrew, Israelite, Jessica Goldhirsch, MA, white

Jessica Goldhirsch
Arlington, MA

Life in the borderlands is painful.

March 20, 2018March 20, 2018 adopted, black dad, borderlands, Chinese, define, grandfather, grandmother, Kaller, latina, life, Native American, OR, painful, Portland, Quaker, stepfather, who am I

Kaller,
Portland, OR.

Native American grandfather, Quaker grandmother, their child was my mother. Black stepfather, biracial brother, adopted Latina child, all Chinese grade school, segregation, race riots, the battle for Civil Rights…who are “my people?”

White Privilege doesn’t exist for me

March 13, 2018March 13, 2018 CA, generations, grandfather, handyman, Justin Banks, middle class, Mission Viejo, wealth, white, white privilege, working-class

Justin Banks,
Mission Viejo, CA.

I was born into an average middle class family that is dominantly white. I know that my father was born into a working class family where my grandfather worked a number of odd jobs but mostly was a handyman for most his life. My dad was the first in his family to go to college and made his living through years of hard work to become a successful business owner. I will probably be traveling the same path with little to no handouts from him. I am not from a family with generations of wealth and wasn’t born with a path to success already cut out for me.

Men tortured by great-great-grandfather torture me.

January 9, 2018January 10, 2018 Boston, grandfather, great grandfather, MA, Robert Carroll Rogers, tortured

Robert Carroll Rogers
Boston, MA

I’m glad you’re doing this. Wounds this deep take honesty, imagination, and all our resources to heal.

Great Grandparents lynched I bless forgive

November 9, 2017November 13, 2017 Beloit, bless, Carol Wickersham, Forgive, grandfather, grandmother, grandparents, lynch, WI

Carol Wickersham,
Beloit, WI.

How dare you presume I’m christian?

September 25, 2017December 26, 2017 assume, CA, Chanukkah, Christian, Christmas, grandfather, Gregory Ruderman, Jewish, Valencia

Gregory Ruderman
Valencia, CA

In most ways, being Jewish in modern America is significantly easier than at any time in the past, such as when my grandfather got his degree at MIT, something Jews typically couldn’t do in his era, but there are times when the discrimination is more insidious. From the supposed “war on Christmas” to the various attempts to legislate biblical morality (and the straight-out racist paranoids), I am personally appalled that there are still people who still believe that their way of belief is the only “right” way. I happen to like being wished “happy holidays” at the checkout–I think it’s respectful. And only once have I replied to a heartfelt “Merry Christmas” with an equally heartfelt “Happy Chanukkah”. Just because I am white doesn’t mean I follow Jesus, and just because I’m Jewish doesn’t mean that I am weird or somehow other, or that I run Hollywood or any other section of the international Jewish conspiracy.

My grandfather used to have a piece of art in his office which was a stylized and colored version of the hebrew word “shalom” (peace), and he kept it in the office as a kind of one-question test. People who didn’t know what it was, thought it was just art, and people he did, he knew were Jewish (or very knowledgeable). I didn’t even realize I had a similar thing in a bumper sticker in my office that looks like one of those Jesus fishes, but with feet, and it says “gefilte” inside. That is, until someone came into my office and asked what “jee-fil-tee” meant. Even after the explanations, I was left realizing that this was a person who basically had no idea that Jews really existed, and certainly didn’t have the slightest idea about our culture. And this is in a day and age that you can find matzo and gefilte fish in almost every grocery for passover.

Africans; unite, mobilise, prosper and LEAVE!!

September 21, 2017July 4, 2018 African, afro, blatant, children, dominant society, england, generation, grandchildren, grandfather, grandmother, micro-agressions, Mike Cruickshank, prosper, segregation, unite

Mike Cruickshank,
England.

As an an Afro person, I feel that the dominant society (people who call themselves White) have subtle and blatant ways to say “You are other”.
Perfect example… These things called micro-agressions are the new way to say ” this is the society. You will always be outsiders, tolerated only”. When it was blatant (segregation), it meant that we HAD to work together as Afro people to prosper. Now that the myth of integration is sold, the achievers move into the dominant society and are swallowed. I am the living example. I love my wife (classified as white), but my Afro culture will be erased in 2 or 3 generations; I’ll be an old faded picture that my children and grandchildren will discuss…

This project is a brilliant way to open the debate properly; maybe people can face the reality of “race relations” in the world.

Standing on the shoulders of my forebears

January 23, 2017August 18, 2020 1926, cleaning lady, forebears, grandfather, grandmother, Grenada, Manhattan, New York City, NY, pass, standing on shoulders, WWII

Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins, MD, MSc,
New York City, NY.
Manhattan.
Collected from The Race Card Project, On Location: The Brooklyn Museum

My grandmother came from Grenada in 1926 and got a job at the Waldorf-Astoria cleaning because she was light enough to pass for white. My grandfather had no work until WWII broke out (he was too old to serve).

I am not white, or caucasian!

December 29, 2016December 29, 2016 CA, caucasian, Danes, debunked, German, Germanic Tribes, grandfather, Heather Sanchez, nazi, politically correct, Roots, royal blood, Saxons, slaves, stereotypes, study, Swedish, Upper Lake, white, white person, WWII

Heather Sanchez,
Upper Lake, CA.

As the world gets more politically correct, I have turned to study my own roots, as a ‘white’ person. What I have found has debunked many of the world’s stereotypes for white or caucasian people. This makes me proud. Is that wrong? I find great pride in the troubles and suffering of my own people, and in their triumphs. No slave owners. No royal blood. Just hard working immigrants who hit the east, and continued west to the Pacific. Mechanics, soldiers, servants, pioneers, cooks. Humble origins. Not Nazi’s either. My German grandfather left prior to WWII to go to Argentina. Ordinary, right? And I’m not Caucasian. Not at all. English, German, Danish yes. Go back further, and you find the European tribes.

The Danes conquered the Brits, the Saxons conquered the Danes, and the Germanic tribes? Who can remember it all.
All I know is to say I am white is no more fair than to say a Native American is Indian. It takes away our rich history as people. It takes away our culture. All white is not the same. Is French language and culture the same as Swedish? Far from it. Yet they are all considered ‘white’. White is a color, not a race. To my children I give the gift of knowing really, truly, who they are. From their Mexican ancestors, to their European ones.

Will racists be in Heaven? – Revelation 5:9

October 18, 2016 Baptist, Bob Jones, church, Family, grandfather, heaven, John Birch society, minister, MLK, moral pollution, NJ, Racist, racists, Rev. Paul Nulton, Revelation 5:9, soldiers, The Cross and The Sword, union, Vernon

Rev. Paul Nulton,
Vernon, NJ.

I grew up in a very racist family and church. My grandfather subscribed to magazines like “The Cross and The Sword” – John Birch society rants about how African-Americans, Jews, Hispanics (all foreigners) were less human than white folk. I remember the minister ranting about Dr. Martin Luther King in sermons and how the Civil Rights movement would ruin America. This took place in the Union North with Union soldiers buried in the town cemetery. Somehow, by grace, I could not receive these influences in my early life. The Baptists were good at teaching the Bible but they made the mistake of teaching me this verse – Revelation 5:9. It became for me the prism through which I saw their venom towards everyone not like them. Church members would say these things casually in conversations with plenty of jokes belittling others. Some still did when I led the Memorial Day Commemoration in that small Pennsylvania hamlet three years ago. I was sadden to hear some of this racist talk at Northwestern College when a student there and in Consistory meetings I’ve presided over. They got some stern responses from me for thinking and saying such things in spaces where Christ is suppose to be Lord! I sometimes ask, “Why was I preserved in the midst of such childhood moral pollution and never bought into this overarching archetypical way of thinking and being? Could it be our doctrines of grace really do have a practical side and dimension?

A Baptist offered me a free ride to Bob Jones University many years ago. What a mistake it would have been to accept it. I wouldn’t have lasted half a day when I responded to what I would have seen and heard there – the righteousness of segregation. So today when encountering certain groups of Protestant Christians and hearing such sentiments I remind them of Revelation 5:9 and ask them do they really know Jesus Christ as “their personal Lord and Savior?” “Personal Lord and Savior” is not a title for Jesus in the Gospels or New Testament. Our Lord’s Saviorhood is mostly spoken of in terms of plurality in the New Testament. He is Savior of the World, Savior of God’s elect, Savior of Israel, and so on, just as Revelation 5:9 ultimately reveals and proves. To believe otherwise is simply not to believe who Jesus really is! What I write here is not personal. It is to honor Christ!

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