A terrible heaviness hung around my childhood home after Grandpap died. "Why are you sad, Daddy?" I tried to comfort my father with all the wisdom of an eight year old. "Grandpap is in heaven."
"I don't think so," he sighed. "You see, your grandfather hated black people."

Looking back, I think Dad said, "colored people."  That would have been the phrase in 1966.  My dad was no theologian, but he knew that a man who cherished unreasoning hatred did not also contain a saving love of Jesus within him.  Grandpap also had difficulty relating to any woman for any length of time, so his relationships were troubled all the way around.

     One question disturbs my family recollections. Why didn't my parents speak out about matters of race?  Why the silent shame, when surrounding attitudes could have poisoned our relationships with folks of other ethnicities?  Upon examing the evidence, I'm sure they wanted us to love all our fellow-humans, but didn't know how to frame the concepts rocking the social world in the sixties. 

     My parents no doubt held their own conflicts about race, but they were determined not to pass them to us.  We lived in a white Pittsburgh neighborhood bordered by, and increasingly penetrated by, black people.  I remember when the schools became integrated.  We kids marvelled that the newspeople thought there was a reason to show up at our schools.  It was weird.  The kids at my school thought it was interesting.  The black kids seemed very shy.  Then one day, I caught a peek at my mother's racial fears.

     My friend Laura persuaded me to get permission to go home with her.  I did.  Her mom wasn't home from work yet, but her big brother was.  I remember we laughed at how big his shoes were--he was a growing teenager.  We had a snack.  Laura's mom came home, and eventually my mom arrived to pick me up.  The mothers met, and I got in the car.  Mom's stern lecture, tinged with hysteria, caught me totally off-guard.

    "Honey, you never told me Laura was black," she began.

"Why does that matter?" I asked.  "We're just friends."

"Do you see this neighborhood?  Look around you.  It's a colored neighborhood.  Couldn't you tell those people didn't want you there?  Laura's mother was as embarrassed as I was.  She probably didn't know her daughter was bringing a little white girl home."

   It was the first time in my life that I flat-out did not believe my mother.  Laura and I were just two kids playing.  We were not symbols of harmony or societal statements.  We had fun together.  We were fourth graders.  I had not for one moment been afraid in her house or her neighborhood.

    Mom calmed down, and asked what we did.  She had to admit that their house was a lot like ours.  It was just as clean as ours, and we had peanut butter sandwiches.  Laura's brother ignored us like we were grade school idiots and he was a big high-schooler, as any white brother would have.  But I never thought of myself as a "white girl."

     In fact, even though we were an all-white neighborhood, we had a lot of knowledge of differences among us.  The Simiones were Italians with hot tempers.  The Mr. Weiss down the street had a drinking problem.  When we wanted Jhnny Weiss to come out and play, he might have to wait until his mom slipped a sleeping pill into his dad's coffee.  I think they were German  There was one family up the road never went to church but celebrated holidays greatly at home.  They were Greek Orthodox.  I didn't know quite what that meant, but they made spectacular colored Easter eggs.  The people across the street from us kept having kids, puppies, and kittens.  When I visited the girls there to play dress-up, they weren't very nice to me.  All those people were white, and white didn't make them nice or religious or educated.  We ourselves were Scotch-Irish and German, working class people who went camping whenever possible. 

     Why didn't my parents talk about matters of ethnicity with us?  Why was it against the unspoken rules at school to openly question each other about how being black felt, what it meant to be white, and what differences stood between us?  Would the answers have held too much anger and fear?

     I notice at the high school where I work that curiousity is opening communication.  Now we have Hispanics in large numbers, and Orientals and Middle Easterners.  People are attracted to people of other ethnicity, and want to know how families might respond.  Meanwhile, the older generations react with difficulty. I abserve that white men are often eager to seek Hispanic, Oriental, and Black women for marriage as readily as White women.  I don't see as many women boldly crossing ethnic lines for romance.  Why is this? 
     At school, I always hang family photos.  The one that provokes the most questions from students is my very white brother and his black fiance holding hands.  "Who is this?" they ask.  They look at me differently after I tell them all about Todd and Tanya and their hobbies and dreams.

     If I have to analyze what I think about race, I have to say that race is in our heads.  Certainly, there are cultural differences.  These must be celebrated, not submerged!   Ugandans want us to know that they are not Nigerians, just as Texans don't want to be compared with New Yorkers.  People from El Salvadore object to being called "Mexican," and vice versa.  "Tamales" are filled with very different substances, depending on country and region.  To me, diversity is wonderful.  Dialogue is useful.  Food is a great starting place.  And how can we not talk about the history of ethnic relations, acknowledging tragic mistakes? 
 

     The final irony is that my blonde blue-eyed younger brother is marrying a black woman this April.  There my Pap left us a legacy of KKK, my parents interupt the chain of hatred, and Todd wades into the waters of interracial marriage.  I doubt he considers it in global terms.  It's not a political gesture--he's simply in love.    I want to know what her family thinks.  I've never heard Todd discuss his reasons for preferring black females, or whether he just happened to be open to falling in love with the proper woman of any color.  Maybe one day, the taboo that suffocates white people like me will evaporate, and I can ask him whether skin color differences affect his love life at all. 


 

(ending coming soon)