When Leaving Racism Means Leaving One’s Family
And how my son made it so much easier
“I wish you’d just married a Black girl instead.” These were the first words my mom said to me as I stepped onto the front porch of her house in the Mississippi Delta in the early months of 1990. I wasn’t offended — in fact, I knew that by not using the n-word, to her mind she was actually making an effort to be both polite and politically correct. After all, I knew how much my mother — like the rest of my family in Mississippi — did not like Black people in general and trusted them even less. Her words were the first indication I’d had that she was even less charitably disposed towards Asians. I soon realized that to her, this was a case of “the better the devil you know,” for she certainly never wanted me to marry anyone who wasn’t as white as our Irish forebearers.
I’m not sure if she ever forgave me for not marrying a white girl. I know my grandmother never did.
Backstory: The Delta
Before continuing my own story, I’ve often said the Mississippi Delta is ground zero for racism in America, and the reader needs to understand why this is so. To be sure, racism in general — and against Black people in particular — has left jagged rips and tears in the fabric of American history, but nowhere else are those flaws so evident as in…
