My grandmother was born in 1905 in California, Pennsylvania. I came to know her while growing up in Pennsylvania's Shenango Valley in the 1970s. Since the Shenango Valley is right next to Ohio's Mahoning Valley, where Youngstown is, I'm clearly very important, since we've been hearing the name of that depressed city of 60,000 residents lately. Just ask Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough, who are turning Youngstown into some kind of metaphor for America's everyman as of late. I'm glad Youngstown is getting more attention, but let's turn to Farrell, Pennsylvania, where my typical white grandmother moved to in 1931 with my Polish immigrant grandfather.
Farrell was built by immigrants, mostly from Poland, Germany, Russia, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Italy. It also saw a large influx of blacks moving in from Alabama in the 1920s. Though these blacks were Americans, they had something similar to the immigrant experience, moving largely from Birmingham to Farrell, looking for work in the North and a better life than what could be had by blacks in the South. Not a bad reason to leave Poland, really.
I don't think my grandfather was racist toward blacks—I don't recall him talking about blacks at all, in fact. But my grandmother certainly did. I remember sitting at her kitchen table while she talked to my parents and my aunt about "them colored people dealing drugs, I seen 'em." I had no idea what she meant by "colored." In my six-year-old mind, I imagined people with skin like patchwork quilts, with all kinds of bright colors and bright patterns from head to toe. I'd never seen one, but I wanted to, though the idea of one made me nervous, because Granma made them sound like they were dangerous. They carried knives and dealt drugs, after all.
Eventually I came to have a better idea of what Granma meant: black people, of course. Black people I'd seen around, though I lived in Hickory, right next to Farrell, but Hickory didn't have any black people in those days, while Farrell was maybe half black, it seemed. See, by the 1970s, all the descendents of white immigrants had left Farrell, but the blacks had a tougher time getting out. Both families on my grandparents' house were black, and while they didn't seem like bad people, we didn't talk to them when we went to visit. I remember one time I did interact with the people next door. I was in the very small back yard, the boundary of which was marked by a wire fence that my grandfather had installed. It was about three feet tall, serving only to show where the property line was, and maybe keep rabbits out of the garden. Granma warned me about the little girl next door, who was just about my age. "You watch out for them colored kids," she told me. "They'll break something and then blame it on you." I wound up talking to the little black girl on the other side of the fence a little bit after I received that warning. The girl had a badminton racket, and offered it to me. As soon as I clutched it, the plastic wrapping on the handle came undone. Clearly it was already like this, but the girl said, "You broke it! Now you gotta pay for that!" Granma had watched the whole thing and said, "See? I told you."
Young, naïve and impressionable as I was at age eight, I didn't feel any culpability. It was mildly annoying to have been accused like this, but it didn't ignite in me any negative feelings toward black people. It seemed that any kid might have tried a lame trick like that; it didn't seem characteristically black. In fact, I have to wonder if Granma hadn't seen that kid pull that trick on others before. They were right next door, after all; she could have seen it. At any rate, I didn't get in trouble, and the girl's parents didn't make a fuss over this, if she told them about it at all. And why would she? They were probably aware of this dumb trick already.
My grandmother died in 1983, never having reached an epiphany of tolerance toward blacks. I'm sure that if my father had brought home a black woman, my grandmother would never have confided in her half-black grandchildren any unspoken nervousness about black men on the street, because she would no doubt have disowned my father if that had happened. The fact that Barack Obama knew his grandmother at all shows that though she was forthcoming about her prejudice, she was more progressive than mine, since she was able to talk about the subject. If I were half black, I'm sure I would never have known my grandmother. Times change.
My mother was somewhat more progressive—and more progressing. When I was a kid, back in those 1970s, I remember she was typically jarred when she saw biracial couples. By the late 1980s, when I was getting ready to go to college, her take on the matter had changed: it wasn't that she had a problem with biracial couples, but rather, getting involved in a biracial couple is asking for trouble, because society would give you trouble, even though she herself wouldn't. By the early 2000s, her take had changed again: she didn't remember ever feeling leery about biracial couples, and was a little offended when I suggested that she would be uncomfortable if I brought home a black woman. "My friend Naomi's son married a black woman!" Mum told me. "I don't have a problem with it at all! What ever gave you that idea?"
I didn't bring up what I remembered. It doesn't matter—I approve of where Mum's attitude had evolved to, and saw no point in reminding her where she'd been. Memories change like that in all of us; and anyway, why fight progress? I never did bring home a black woman—I'm marrying my white fiancée next week, in fact—but it made me feel a lot better that my mother didn't have a problem with it. Same with my father, son of that aforementioned grandmother, and same with myself and my siblings.
My grandmother never changed, and if she were still alive and 103 years old last month, she still wouldn't have changed, I suspect. But Barack Obama's grandmother is the kind of person we all know, the kind of person more like my mother, born in 1934, who has moved from fear to tolerance to acceptance. Is Obama's white grandmother really typical? Yes, she is. That doesn't make her attitude universal, but it sure is common, whether we're talking about an attitude that's held today or was held in the recent or distant past. The fact that Barack Obama can talk about this shows that he understands where whites are coming from, and that they don't need to feel guilty about ever having felt that way. Many of us have felt that way or know people who have, and airing these feelings is probably the best way to move past them. Do we want to flog racists, or convert them? Think about it.
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