Your Dad Can Unlearn Racism Too
My Dad and I have a pretty solid relationship now, but it hasn’t always been that way. As I was growing up we did not see eye to eye on anything, it seemed.
I was a wild child, rebellious, pushing the status quo and social norms everywhere I could. Dad grew up with Southern sensibilities and is quite conservative. Let’s just say I never really fit his ideas of a ‘little lady’.
The older I get, the more I understand my Dad.
John was born and raised in Orlando, however for most of his childhood, when school was out of session for the summer he was on his grandparents’ farm in South Carolina. On the farm, some of the help were ‘negros’ which his family ‘treated well’ but they weren’t usually allowed in the house. As a child, his family had a ‘colored maid’. He has vivid memories of white-only restaurants, bathrooms, water fountains, and so on.
His childhood was a bit of a rough one, it’s easy to question where he experienced any ‘privilege’. Among the many adults in his family, there were addiction and mental health issues which impacted his life. Though an improvement from past generations of farmers and immigrants, his parents often struggled to make ends meet. When not in school he helped care for his three younger sisters. He enlisted in the Navy prior to high school graduation knowing that college was not an option for him and to avoid being drafted. Looking back he wouldn’t easily see examples of experiencing any sort of privilege, making the notion of ‘white privilege’ a difficult thing to comprehend.
Dad never considered himself a racist.
He’s told me stories of befriending a Black guy when he was in the Navy, offering him a ride home when he needed one and being aggressively boxed in on the highway by semi-trucks presumably because a white guy was driving a Black guy around.
He remembers when his high school was desegregated. He doesn’t remember having many feelings about it, though most of his peers were against it, so he just sort of went with the crowd. He was a quiet kid who kept under the radar.
He grew up feeling a connection with the Confederate flag.
I dated several Black kids in high school; I didn’t bring them home. See, Dad didn’t have a problem with ‘colored people,’ but he did feel strongly that the races shouldn’t mix. I knew this, so when I divorced and started dating again as an adult and wanted to feel safe bringing beaus around, I approached the topic with him.
“What if I dated a Latin guy Dad, how would you feel about that?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “I’d feel like you were doing it just to spite me, or to spite the world. You can’t have that much in common with someone like that, our cultures are just too different.”
Interesting. Kirk, a Jamaican, and I had been close friends since high school so I asked,
“What about Kirk, Dad? We clearly have stuff in common, we’ve been friends for more than 15 years. What if I dated him?”
That gave Dad pause.
Five years later, when Kirk and I actually began dating, my Dad’s response was something to the effect of, “My brain tells me it’s wrong, but when I see how happy you are, my heart tells me it’s right. It will just take time to get the two to line up.”
So here we are, in 2020. Dad is nearly 69 years old, retired and has mellowed greatly. We still don’t see eye-to-eye often, but we’ve found common ground and have a lovely friendship now.
Over the past few months, my Dad has had what I would call an awakening around racism and it’s systemic roots.
He’s changing his language: Negro and Colored are being intentionally replaced with Black and Person of Color. He’s reading books, watching documentaries and really diving into exploring the topic with my Mom — at his own pace.
It took several weeks of patient (on both our parts) conversation about the Confederate flag, public buildings named after Confederate soldiers and statues of them. Eventually, my Dad found himself seeing how those markers impact People of Color and why we should consider changing things.
A few months back, my Dad read some articles from Be the Bridge, an organization focused on helping Christians realize and understand systemic racism. After he read them, he shared that he was processing the idea that the way he was born, as a white man, inherently means that he is a threat to People of Color — and this left him feeling helpless and ashamed. There was recognition that with this realization he now has a window into how People of Color feel ALL THE TIME.
Currently, Dad is reading a MASSIVE book on Reconstruction. And I mean reading it, digesting it. He frequently comes to me annoyed to have discovered yet another way in which our country has robbed people of equality and equity. I’d say he’s processing waves of anger and bitterness as he opens himself up to the reality that America was never really ‘great’, at least not for everyone. He often expresses feeling short changed in that he never learned any of this before.
To learn something new, something that requires reorganizing your childhood beliefs, addressing your own biases… this takes a lot of courage and vulnerability. These are two traits I’ve honestly never really associated with my Dad. Yet here he is, cracking himself open and embracing new ideas. He’s connecting with Black friends from church, and asking if he can listen to them as they share about their personal experiences. He’s apologizing to my Black partner when he catches himself making a joke that crosses a line.
Sure, I’m proud of him; of course I am. However, that’s not why I’m sharing his story with you. I’m sharing because it brings me hope, and I think it may offer hope to you too.
If my white, retired, conservative, Republican, ‘not racist’, Confederate flag respecting, Dad can evolve and become part of a solution — so can others. There ARE people out there doing more than attending book clubs. There ARE people who are genuinely seeing our country through a new lens. And they are getting angry and into action, voting, and talking to others.
To all my BIPOC friends, friends who are allies, advocates and activists — keep up the work, because it IS working. We are gaining momentum, even if you don’t see it just yet.
P.S. My Mom, Mary, is on her own, parallel journey that is outlined here. She’s begun hosting an education and discussion group. If you’re interested in joining the next round, sign up here to be on her invite list.
