My black history (edited for typos)

This entry was inspired by my OD friend Terminator. His humorous dedication of a certain video to me, got me to thinking about perspective and how it applies  to some really important issues.

In all of my life I have never met anyone that worked harder than my dad. He used his bootstraps and pulled himself up. I always say he was a lumberjack; and he was and loved the woods, but as a skilled carpenter he also built many of the houses in the Maple Hills community where I was first raised, including the two story house we lived in.

Mom, when she was a child was considered to be what was so cruelly called, white trash. Her alcoholic father was killed in an alley by some other alcoholic who smashed a bottle over his head. She married dad when she was 17 to escape the world she was raised in. She did all right too. But you don’t grow up in that without it affecting your idea of who you are and what you are worth.

I was daughter number 3, child number 5.

Dad’s mom suffered a horrible childhood. She was the product of rape. In that day there was no kindness afforded to women in that situation. How people can blame a woman or her child for being violated and proceed to ruin their lives I will never fathom. The rapist was an Egyptian man. My dad, one eighth Egyptian, had black curly hair.  Two strikes against him. His family heritage and his not quite white appearance in a day  when people of any color were considered by many to be less than.

Mom use to work in the cotton fields, potato fields and in orchards with Mexican migrant workers as her companions. She shared a camaraderie with them, they didn’t judge her. This was in Indiana I think, if not than Wyoming.

Baggage much?

Mom always taught me that people are people. I knew Dad was prejudice, later I would understand better why. I knew other things about him as well. For instance, he was thrown in jail once for attacking a pack of policeman. While he may have not wanted to be associated with anyone of color, because of the abuse he himself had received, he had no love for the cowardice and hatred of the long arm of the law that was severely beating a black man.

Dad was Dad, Mom was Mom and I am me. And I have had my own experiences.

We moved from Washington to Wyoming when I was in first grade. I didn’t know of any black people at that point. My Aunt and Uncle had adopted three Hispanic children. I didn’t know that they were something called Hispanic or Mexican for a few years after I knew and loved them for who they were, my cousins.

When I was 8 we moved to Oklahoma. Trees are what took us there. Lumber to be specific. Here is where my education begins.

Termi, it really was like stepping into a whole new world for me. Not the world you show me in in your video, but still. We lived in the country and rode the bus to school. The bus driver was the first black person I ever met and had a conversation with.  Snoozy, Tuffy, he talked funny. You have to understand. I could barely understand the lingo of the white southerners much less the thick drawl of that sweet man.  I remember one day I just didn’t want to go to school. I faked it, Mom didn’t buy it. On the bus I laid down and when it was time to make room for anyone else to sit the driver told me I had to. I put on my most pathetic, don’t I look like something the cat dragged in look and he told me to lay back down and asked if I was sick. Oh yeah, I confirmed that I was. When the bus got to school and all the kids got off he asked me, "Do yoou wan I shooed cur yoou home?"

He might as well have been speaking Chinese. I’m sure my eyes got very big as I began to try to figure out what he was saying. After about 5 tries I finally understood. Then I was genuinely scared. The image of my bus driver literally carrying me home was not one I was ready for.

"Carry me???"

It didn’t take long for the gap to be bridged and he to understand what I thought he meant and me to understand what he meant. I played hooky that day. Mom wasn’t home when I got there and no one locked doors back then so I went home and played.

School scared me. These kids, of all colors, were like foreigners to me.  Every time I went to school I went with a lump in my throat. The stress of trying to understand what anyone was saying was too much for me. One day we had a substitute teacher. She was very sweet, very gentle and very dark. One more different thing (a sub, not her color) was more than I could manage. I began to cry. Out in the hallway the sub and some other lady, tried to console me. Tried to figure me out. They thought they were so wise. Everyone thought I was afraid of the sub because she was black. Through my tears I told them, no, that wasn’t it. In my youth and through the lump in my throat I could not articulate what was wrong. I’ll never forget the kind eyes of the substitute teacher searching mine, trying to reassure me. I remember looking into her eyes and being horrified that  she thought I was afraid of her skin. I remember feeling sad for her, because, being a very empathetic child I could feel what that must feel like. I hated that I might be causing her pain. They never did get it.

When I was 9 a very large oak tree fell on Dad. My brother, then 14, sawed the tree off of Dad and ran for help. He saved his life. Barely. Dad’s pelvis was crushed. He died twice on the way to the hospital. They said he would never walk. He said he would. They said he would always limp. He said he wouldn’t. After a few months in the hospital he came home. I remember all of us kids walking with him in the woods. A little further each time. He taught us things as we walked. He wasn’t much of a talker so when he spoke he had our attention. He in fact did leave off the limp. He was the most amazing man I have ever known.

Not so for Mom. When an Oak tree lays down on top of your pelvis, well, I guess some things were never the same. I may still be working on forgiving her for rejecting him. He wasn’t perfect though and he had done damage to her over the years, taking her for granted. I guess having him home all the time was more than she could do.  Hmmmm… never thought about it like that before.

Dad moved back to Washington and Mom moved back to being white trash, hauling us along with her. He sent child support but Mom’s new "husband" drank much of it. I remember how sad it was being THAT kid. I didn’t have the mentality of that kid, but I had the look. The man who eventually became my stepfather was a full blood Choctaw Indian. Most of my friends at school were Indian kids. Just one problem. The white kids. I was considered "less than." And the Indian kids. I was not quite fully accepted because with me being white they just knew that I had no way of really relating to them.  I suppose they were r

ight in a way. I spent the night one night at a friends house. There was no toilet. You had to go to the bathroom out in the woods. I didn’t act shocked or grossed out. I just went with the flow (so to speak) I don’t think she ever forgave me for seeing that. The Indian kids were rough and socially different. You had to be able to take a hard punch to the shoulder in fun and you had to be able to return it in fun. Most of them had alcoholics in their families.  Now I know some of them were being sexually abused.

As I got older and we were in junior high and high school the black kids seemed to get angrier. Their yelling and angsty attitudes were common and intimidating. There was one girl. Her name was Pamela. She had the sweetest spirit of any kid of any race that I had ever met. She always remained so. She was a strong Christian. I mean that, without working at it at all she exuded Christ.

In southeast Oklahoma, the KKK was alive and well then. I hated them more than I feared black people. I would always be that kid looking into the subs eyes and hating the thought of causing pain. I understood the history behind the intimidation I felt and I felt pain because of the color of my skin. And I felt frustration. Race riots broke out back then. The Black Panthers were on their way to our county to avenge the death of a young black boy who had been hung up on a barbed wire fence outside of a bar.  The day before school closed because of the unrest, I remember walking up the steps to the school. A white boy, one of the most unassuming and quite young men to grace the halls was suddenly being pounded on the head by a shrieking black girl. She had taken off her high heel shoe upon finding someone who absolutely would not fight back and attempted to pound holes in his head. It was horrifying. He covered his head with his arms and books and tried to escape. She did serious damage before he could get away.  I had a new fear.

Eventually the riots died down and school resumed. The Black Panthers went away and the KKK stayed. My sister, 1 1/2 years older than me made friends with a black boy from school. They connected. They could talk to each other. They weren’t dating. They were just good friends. This was deemed unacceptable.

One day on her way home from school a group of angry black girls attacked her. They dragged her into an alley, and grabbing her by her hair proceeded to pound her head into the rocks. They told her to stay away from the young man she was friends with. She tried to tell them they were just friends but they didn’t care.

My sister moved to Wyoming. She was on the bus to go live with my grandmother when she met a young Christian couple. They took her in. They ministered to her. We had no idea where she was. She swore them to secrecy because she didn’t want to live with Grandma and because theirs was the first normal environment she had lived in since we moved from Wyoming. The black girls that beat her up that day would watch me in the hall at school and say things to themselves while looking at me. I had a loathing that I had never felt before.  One day they approached me in the hall. I was so angry that they had chased my sister out of our lives and that we didn’t know where she had been chased to. They were all older and much taller than me.

"Hey! Where yoour sista be?!"

I exploded. "I don’t know!! We haven’t heard from her in months. FOR ALL I KNOW SHE MAY BE DEAD!!!!!!!"

They weren’t expecting that. They thought I was like the meek and mild boy with the shoe prints on his head. They backed off saying, "oh."

That was a huge moment in my life. I stopped letting fear be in control then.

When I was 14 I went to live with Dad. I knew some of the kids. I was comfortable again. It took me a minute, but I could finally feel normal again. The kids in the neighborhood would get together and play tag and kick the can. There was a family four doors down with a black mom and a white dad. A black family lived down the street the other way that had two teenage kids. The lessons from my mom came back. People were just people again. It didn’t take long of not being hated to know that there was nothing to fear.

Fast forward thirty years. I and my daughters move to Atlanta, Georgia. I get a job at a bakery. Actually a factory. You probably have bread from this company in your kitchen.

I work like my dad. I have to, it is what I do and who I am. It always gets me into trouble. Nobody works like my dad.

I was plunged once again into a completely unfamiliar scenario. But hey, people are people. It didn’t take long though for personality conflicts to arise. A white redneck girl who never stops talking in the most irritating voice about the most offensive things. Did I want the website address for a picture of Elvis with a vagina?!  The onslaught of vulgarity from a select few caused me to start bringing a book to read at lunch break. Alone was preferable.

There were some Christians there though, they avoided the nastiness too.  One in particular was a middle aged black lady with a personality that would melt butter. We talked, when we had breaks together.  Others came along that were hired after me. Jane, a white woman who was about ten years older than me.  At first she was really skittish around me. I couldn’t figure out why but hey, people are people. I reached out to her and made a fast friend. Most of the guys I worked with were cool too. Both black and white. I think for the most part that guys are better in that kind of work environment. They don’t have fingernails to scratch you with.  There were no Hispanic people working on the lines but they were hired for clean up. I don’t know how legal they were but they were friendly and they tried to teach me some Spanish.

Leroy was one of my favorite people there. He was younger than me and black and had a great sense of humor. Later when I was pregnant (after I married The Babe’s dad) Leroy would put his hard hat under his shirt and waddle along with me way worse than I ever did. He was always supportive and a bright spot in my day.  An older white man escaped into books on his breaks as well, we would share authors and ideas. I wish I could remember the name of the next person I mention. He was tall, built like a tree and as quiet and gentle as a breeze in branches. When I held onto my hat, he could lift me up by it. And hold me there, a few feet off the ground.  I am glad to be recalling all of this because it makes me smile and remember that it was not all bad.

One day I was called into the supervisor’s office. The Christian lady I had mentioned before was there. Our supervisor told me that we needed to address some issues. Talk about a high heel in the head. My "friend" had complained that I was prejudice. That I didn’t like her. That I wasn’t working like I should. I was lazy. I took too long on my breaks. The list went on.

I was floored and hurt. Nothing that she said could have been further than the truth. The truth was that she always worked as slow as possible and I worked circles around her to make up for it. And I did it gladly, I liked working.  I found out later that when Jane started working there she was told the first night that I was lazy and a horrible person.  S

he really kept her eye on me for a while and finally realized that nothing that she had been told was true.

Things started changing. The guys that had always been my friends remained so. They told me to ignore the changing tide of dislike that was coming at me. Randy, a self proclaimed "preacher" who is just about the biggest jerk I have ever met in my life started acting out in the same way a few of the ladies talked about me.  In a bread factory of this size there are gigantic bread pans. Six pans are welded together with about two inches in between them. With bread in them they are heavy. About 60 lbs. if I remember right.  When the oven breaks down and there is bread baking in it the pans have to be brought out on a conveyor belt while it gets fixed. The whole factory stops what they are doing to come help throw the pans on to the floor and push them across the factory to make room for more that are coming out. One day Randy started throwing pans across the floor AT certain ones of us. He knocked one guy down and acted as though it was an accident, even though we had all seen him aiming and laughing about it. He picked the wrong chickee when he sent  one my way.  It was loud in the factory so I yelled at him to stop it.

Every time I turned my back to do my job he sent another one sailing at my feet. I finally had enough. Skinny white girl headed for a VERY large black man with blood in her eyes. I was actually reaching for him when my strong, tall friend  grabbed my shoulders from behind and very kindly and firmly whispered in my ear that if I touched Randy I would automatically be fired. He said it wouldn’t matter to those in authority why I did it. If I did it Randy and I would both be fired. He understood my plight but he also knew the rules.  "I just don’t want to see you get fired because of him."

Randy laughed as I backed off and went fuming back to work.  He didn’t do anything for a while but when it was time to push all the pans back to the oven he started tossing them at me again.  He was on  his hands and knees and the whole factory watched as I walked over to him. He saw me coming. I knelt down next to him and said in his ear.

"You will stop acting like an ass to me right now. I am told that if I put my hands on  you we will both be fired. I don’t (pardon my language OD’ers) give a s**t about this job and if you do that again I WILL get you fired."

That was the end of that but it was further fuel on the fire of  harassment I would get over the course of several months. For me it wasn’t a racial issue. It was an ethics issue and a personality issue. My true friends stayed my friends until the end, but there were only a few of them. After two years I left that job with a bad taste in my mouth. I began to understand prejudice in a way I would never have imagined. Jane actually quit her job because she couldn’t stand to watch how I was being treated.

I became prejudiced. Obviously not against all people of color, but I found I had been tainted in that I had an automatic distrust of black people. Really, the nicer they were, the greater my mistrust  because it was those people who were so nice and "Christian" that stabbed my back the hardest and twisted the knife more cruelly. It was not fair that it was done. And it is not fair of me to judge anyone by what someone else has done. My heart knows what is right, and people are people.

I am still that little girl crying and looking into another’s eyes and wishing I could explain that I am not afraid of their skin.

I am still that sister, aching for everything to be okay and horrified at the uncalled for violence.

I am still that teenager playing kick the can with the neighbors.

I am still that co-worker, not cooperating in the least with the stereotype that is being thrust upon me.

All of this is a part of my black history, my understanding and experience.

To this day I refuse to give into my father’s fears. I have them, but I talk to them.

I tell them that people are people.

Dad was afraid of being rejected because of his appearance. I don’t think there is a person on earth who isn’t rejected because of their appearance. And I think there are plenty of people who will remain true to themselves in spite of how that may appear to anyone else. That is the kind of people I aspire to be.

Some people decided, for whatever reason, that they knew how I felt about them. After all, I’m white. Doesn’t that say it all?