A few words about "that's how everyone thought back then" no matter the when you are talking about. This is for white people and what we Allow.
Let me preface by saying I loved my grandparents unreservedly, still do. I cherish the memories of them for the people they were to me. The Grandma who taught me that a Saturday afternoon spent with my nose in a book was time well spent. My Pop who taught me the names of flowers and how to nurture and grow things. My Pop who always kept some paper handy for sketching, the accomplished artist and RISD graduate who became an engineer because of the depression. He was accomplished at that as well. Gardens, green grass, yard sales, books, antiques, curling up on a rainy day staring out the window my hands wrapped around a cup of hot tea, long drives, these are their legacy to me.
They also held some incredibly racist points of view without ever realizing or recognizing themselves as racist.
First are the stories about the one Black family in my grandmother's neighborhood growing up and how the neighbors and my great grandparents "let" the father sell his eggs and produce in their neighborhood. There was a sense of heroism attached to my great grandfather for being among his first customers. The egg man, as he was known, brought his young son along with him on his rounds, a little boy my grandmother's age, they never played together or even spoke, just looked at each other, peering around their daddy's legs. That little boy knew to never say hello, to never do more than keep his eyes down but for the occasional glance at my grandmother and her siblings, but never a smile. To my grandmother her daddy seemed magnanimous and good because there wasn't physical violence against that family, that little boy. They were Allowed. They were not included I'm sure most white people can share some similar story from their family's history. This same story from that little boys perspective was relayed with caution and advice of how to get along and get by. This was the way this story was told through his family's narrative.
Decades later in that same town when I was in third grade, Timothy Bowden proposed to me, he was the only Black child at St James at that time. My parents thought this was adorable, many of their friends were horrified. Like the egg man he was "Allowed". Allowed is not welcomed, it is not included, it is not a friend. Allowed knows not to cross the line. We were two little children who were friends with first crushes. Within weeks our desks were moved apart. The next year my family changed schools and churches and I never saw Timothy Bowden again.
My grandfather, my Pop, we were peas in a pod, I spent most weekends with my grandparents, helping him in the garden, watching birds out the kitchen window with our Peterson's Field Guide at the ready as they swarmed the feeders, watering the lawn on hot afternoons, I can still see his face in profile as he used his handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his brow, I can still smell his pipe, and see him in his favorite spot watching out the window and playing solitaire. More good memories than I can count all wrapped in love.
I didn't know until years later that he was one of the strongest objectors when my parents adopted my brothers, fostering was okay and even Godly, giving your name to Black children was a step over.
Again that word, Allowed.
I wasn't aware of his casual use of racist language and deeply held racist ideas until I was an adult. Or that he undoubtedly didn't recognize himself as racist because he Allowed his Black grandchildren into his life, he Allowed Black workers on his team when he worked building highways, the Greene Airport runway, the Scituate Reservoir. He Allowed. And in his world that was enough and better than most.
It is heart breaking to me as an adult to realize how Allowed must have felt to my brothers. It's horrifying to know he used racial slurs when no one else was looking. But my brothers were Allowed. I am deeply saddened to think how it must have felt when my grandparents moved in with us. I was in college, like most young adults I was living life outside of my family even during the times I was under the same roof. My gaze was focused outward. But my brothers became Allowed under their own roof.
I spent most of my childhood thinking that loving my brothers offered them sort of talismanic protection against racism. That when they came home at the end of the day all of the hurt they felt and danger they faced receded in a warm embrace of love.
Love does not erase Allowed.
So here is the difficult lesson, I still love my grandparents deeply, I still miss them and grieve their loss, but never will I try to soften my brothers' memories by imposing my own like some filmy gauze over old wounds. This is the same process that we need to acknowledge when removing monuments, when we decide how we honor historical figures and how we approach teaching our children history. These are the honest reckonings we need to face. It doesn't mean we no longer love our parents or grandparents, it doesn't mean we are erasing history. It means we are reckoning with it in all of its messy humanity. It means that we recognize and amplify the histories of Black and Indigenous people, both in the larger context of who we are as a nation and in the more intimate context of who we are as a friend.
It means we stand behind those voices when they speak, and we stand in front of them when police point teargas and less lethal rounds in their direction.
It means we no longer hold our tongues over Thanksgiving dinner when our racist uncle, brother, dad, sister, mother, grandmother, interject racist ideas into the conversation, no matter how passive those ideas are.
You can still love them. You can still remember your history. But that language, that miseducation, that casual racist hate..it is not Allowed.
And it can never be Allowed again.
