My Journey out of Racism

“I wish you’d just married a black girl.” These were the first words my mother said to me when I brought my Asian wife home to meet my family in the Mississippi Delta. Thing is, I wasn’t that offended, for I realized that Mom was honestly trying to be polite by not using the n-word instead, and by pulling me off to one side on the front porch where my wife couldn’t hear her words. I replied by giving her a hug, and we all went inside the house.

That was in 1991. I’d grown up in the Delta fiercely proud of my Southern heritage. Just down the road was a Southern Baptist church where all my direct line lay buried all the way back to 1870. In my room I kept my own Confederate battle flag, the old Stars and Bars, and to me, it hearkened back to a time when Southern gentlemen knew what nobility and courtesy and gallantry really meant. We lived way out in the boonies of Sunflower County, eight miles from the nearest (very small) town, and my high school was in the next county over. We had cotton fields in front and in back of our house, a soybean field to one side, and a little farm store on the other side. Sometimes hours would go by before a car would pass by on the road in front of our house. Looking back, I must admit I miss the calm and quiet, being able to recognize everyone, and actually considering those around us to be our neighbors (even if they did live several miles away).