How Did I Get From There to Here?

If there were a biography about you, what would the title be?

Warning: use of the N word is used in context in this story.

I often wonder how I became the person I am.  I was born in 1950, a Baby Boomer, in the Deep South.  I was raised Southern Baptist by a very devout mother and a father who attended as often as his conscience prompted him.  The influence in our home was definitely ultra-conservative and racist. Everything was segregated.  Water fountains and business entrances were marked white and colored.  Should a black person come to our house, they knocked on the back door, 

I never knew a single black person by name till I met Rosie, a black lady who occasionally cleaned for Mother.  One day Rosie told me she had a little girl just my age, three years old,  I was enchanted, desperate to know more and perhaps play with her little girl.

Innocently, I blurted out, “Is she a nigger?” As young as I was, the hurt look on Rosie’s face showed me I’d said something horrible.

Kindly but firmly, she corrected me. “She’s the same color as me but it’s wrong to say nigger. Say colored.” Rosie was as kind as ever afterward. I was so glad she didn’t stay mad.

Not too long afterward, Rosie had no one to keep Cynthia, so she had to bring her along. I was ecstatic to get to play with her all day. I couldn’t wait to share news of my new friend the second Daddy walked in the door. Rosie had crossed the line. I never saw her or sweet little Cynthia again.

I pray we never go back to that hate-filled time.

9 thoughts on “How Did I Get From There to Here?”

  2. It is so sad that there was such a time when racism was the norm and I hope it never is again as we are all just people, I once had someone ask me if I had any black blog friends, I remember that the shock must have shown as they said don’t look at me like that. I don’t give a rats ass what colour someone’s skin is as long as they are nice to me I am nice to them and have never wondered what colour a blog friend is because it doesn’t matter.

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  3. I grew up in the same era, and although in my part of the country we didn’t have segregated drinking fountains or anything like that, racial prejudice was pretty common. My father was what I would call a benign racist. By that I mean that while he held a low opinion of most nonwhite people, never in a million years would he have been rude to a person of a different race or mistreated them in any way — and he would have beat the tar out of any of us kids if we had been rude to or otherwise mistreated someone of another race. Where I grew up, that attitude was pretty standard. Racist beliefs were common, but actual racist behavior was rare. In fact, I recall being shocked and horrified when in my early teens I heard a guy I had sort of liked use the n-word. That was the end of that crush!

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