Patty's Friday Presentation

Acceptance

Acceptance. I accept a lot of things. I accept that I have to clean my house, even though it’s not my favorite activity. I accept an angry phone call from a parent of a student in my class, disagreeing with my choice to not select her son’s artwork to go to the local art show. I accept but really don’t like how much this upcoming wedding is costing me. I have to accept a lot of things that I really don’t want to.

But there are things in this world that I don’t want to accept. I do not want to accept the dirty looks that we get as we walk down the corridor in the mall. I do not want to accept the stares from the old women and men as we walk out of Sunday breakfast hand in hand. I do not want to accept the comments, blatant hateful comments, made directly to us as we walk in to a local store. However, I am told to ignore. That there is nothing I can do about it. That he has been living with it for years. That I too will get used to it. I ask him, and still wonder, how ever do you accept racism?

I was semi-prepared for both sets of our parents to have reservations about our relationship. My parents expressed a little bit of concern, very little, mostly that if we were to further our relationship and eventually get married and have children, would our children be treated differently? I explained that I did not feel our children would be treated differently than any other child and that there were many biracial children in this world today. Naive? Upon meeting him, he was instantly a part of our family and their concerns were immediately washed away. I sometimes now wonder if they love him more than they love me. I’m only somewhat kidding.

His family though was a little bitter tougher to crack. It is a somewhat common belief in the African American culture that white women come in to the community and ‘take’ all the good black men away. His mother (his parents are divorced and his father is out of the picture) was skeptical of me at first. It took her much longer to warm up to me. With time though we have become closer. She now calls me instead of him. She offers to help with the wedding, but when I ask her for addresses I still don’t have them. I ask her for pictures of him growing up and I don’t have those either. I silently wonder if this means anything deeper other than she hasn’t gotten around to it yet. She’s had six weeks though…

I am not sure if I consider this racism, or just protection of one’s children, I mean simply wanting what is best for them. Maybe initial thoughts are formed in racist stereotypes, maybe formed in the unknowns. I’m not sure.

That first time it happened in public was unknown to me. I didn’t really notice. He did. We were in the mall, shortly after we started dating in 2007. A big city mall, not rural, not necessarily urban urban, just a city mall. We were holding hands, as we often do. As we were leaving he asked, did you see that old couple give us that dirty look and start whispering? No, I replied, I did not. I kind of figured it would be coming. Deep down I was wishing that it wouldn’t. It is 2007 after all. Racism can’t possible still exist, right?

The second time I did notice. We were walking, hand in hand of course, out from a Sunday morning breakfast out. It was a small café, not ten minutes from our house, which is in a diverse area of town. As were leaving, there was a large group of senior citizens waiting to be seated. As we turned the corner to them, some gave us the most evil eyes I have ever seen, while others moved to be further away from us. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it just happened. I somewhat justified their behavior with their age. They had to be in their 80s. I wondered what my conservative grandmother would say, if she were living, about our relationship. Or my alcoholic, country-raised grandfather from the hills of West Virginia. But why should anything, age or upbringing, justify such horrible, judgmental, racist behavior?

The third incident was the worst. We are walking in to Target, hand in hand the day before Christmas. As we are walking in, a middle age black woman with her two children was walking out. As she walks past us, she looks directly at us and loudly proclaims “Disapprove, disapprove, disapprove…” and continued to repeat it as she walked away, with her children in tow. I was furious. I wanted to respond. I was so shocked, I couldn’t respond. He just said, you’ll get used to it. Now I was mad at him! What do you mean I’ll get used to it!?

He said there are only so many times that you can get followed around a store by an employee, had derogatory things said to you, be put down by racist remarks before you let it slide off your back. Your remarks said in anger aren’t going to change their opinions. We need to worry about us. What matters is us. Not them. Not their racist views. Is it sad? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that you accept it. I’m not sure I will ever be able to accept it as he does.

Now I wonder about what my family said. Will our children be treated differently? How will I raise them, teach them about racism and how to deal with it? How will I teach them to not accept it AND to teach others to fight against it? This is not something that should be accepted. And the worst part of it all is that HE accepts it because HE is used to it.