Thread by @MattWaldman

Earlier, I wrote a thread about my experience becoming part of a black family and what I learned. You can find it here:

https://twitter.com/MattWaldman/status/1266581164699136006

There's more I want to share. Racism is formative. It's taught--intentionally and unintentionally.

I was born 50 years ago. Two years after the Civil Rights Act. My first memories of race-related subjects were seeing Bostonians, Clevelanders, and New Yorkers on TV protesting against the busing of black kids to white schools.

I was so young, I didn't understand.

I understood that a bunch of white adults were afraid and angry with people I didn't meet or know anything about. My first interaction with a black person was pre-school. Kenny King and I were friends and hung out on the roof of a playhouse during recess. He taught me a bad word.

After lifting up our shirts and poking our bellies out, thinking we were hilarious, we sit down. He turns to me and says, "You're a h$!y, and I'm a _______," as if he was saying, "This cloud looks like a horse."

We go back to giggling about our belly buttons.

I go home. I'm watching a game show waiting for dinner. I see a man with skin as dark as Kenny's dancing on TV. Proud of what I learned from Kenny, I blurt out--"I'm a h$!y and he's a ____."

I'm five, maybe. Parent reacts with vitriolic anger and fear.

"Never, ever say that word! It's a horrible word!" Minus the rage, it's a solid response. As the years passed, I associated that word with rage. I heard that word and felt rage.

But...

The jokes SOME of my family told, the words they used to refer to black people moving in their neighborhoods, the fear and anger they had, the characterizations of them being dirty or dangerous generated a more insidious lesson: Don't say anything hateful in public but...

To them, it was ok to do it around the right people but not ok to be vocal or known for doing so in public. Many of my friends learned the same lessons.

And my family faced their own discrimination in this country. However, they came here on their own free will

They weren't kidnapped, sold, and families separated here into slavery. Where I grew up in Cleveland, neighborhoods were often segregated by immigrant heritage. The Barbershop scene in Grand Torino--how adults talked-often around kids. Humor embeds hatred/fear/ignorance.

I moved to Atlanta in 1980. Around the time black boys were going missing. 94Q FM had to DJs who dedicated the Queen song "Another One Bites the Dust" to the missing and murdered children. Rightly fired. Song for the next 40 years rarely played in Atlanta.

The South scared me. It still scares occasional northern and western colleagues who half-joke same stuff I heard 35-40 years earlier. They comfort themselves falsely that the North and West are better.

The South is different but not necessarily dumber or smarter--with race.

There have been a lot more black people living in the South so the interaction increased for me. I had black teachers and classmates for the first time--and often. I made friends, but not ever really close friends.

Family behavior reinforced that subtly and not so subtly.

BET was a different channel before it became white-owned in the 1990s and it lost its compass for well over a decade--(sorry if you disagree but many of you know it's true). But growing up as a music video kid, BET was a source of wonder and awe. R&B, Hip-Hop, Blues, Jazz, Fusion

The Cosby Show--even w/what we know now--was great TV. I was attracted to women of all types but the parent seeing me watching Lisa Bonet, Charnele Brown, Mikki Howard, Grace Jones, and Anita Baker so intently likely prompted the message: As long as you don't date a black girl.

Pleasing a parent is a deep-seated thing. Peer-pressure is a deep-seated thing. Learning that it was ok to like black entertainers and athletes but learning in an unspoken or indirectly communicated way that they were different and most were not desirable people to be around.

Much of that fear from parents was rooted in fear of dealing with their parents and not so much their hatred. Ignorance? Fear of displeasing elders and having strife? Sure.

Had a grandmother who I loved and adored. She introduced me to jazz, boxing, cards, and fantastic jokes and story-telling. She was scared of black people. I didn't know it then but her dad was robbed and beaten by a group of black men many years prior and she never

worked past it. It was ingrained in her in a bad way. Funny thing is, of all the white family members I had, she would have naturally fit in easiest with my black family members if she wasn't ignorant and afraid.

When I turned 30, after never going a week without talking with her. I knew I was her favorite grandkid. My cousins knew. When I told her I was serious about a black woman, she never spoke with me again. I've had black friends tell me "she was from a different time."

and excuse it a bit. Forget that. The white people who opposed slavery during slavery were from a different time. The white people who stood up during Civil Rights were from a different time.

Old people are praised for wisdom but let off the hook for their outdated views by family members.

If they're wise, they're still capable of growing, right? Let them off the hook for stuff that older people 200-300 years ago knew was wrong?

What did I learn?

Being outwardly and vocally hateful was wrong and made your family look bad but being exclusionary for ignorant reasons, telling jokes, reinforcing racism behind the scenes was intentionally and unintentionally encouraged.

It's the source of gaslighting.

That racism was often tolerated by younger adults not to upset their older parents or authority figures in society with the purse strings.

That it was ok to be friendly but not close to black people.

That black entertainers were exceptional and not the norm. Ring a bell?

That the norm was more like what I saw on the news. What did I see on the news? Murders, robbers, rioters in Miami reacting to police murder/brutality.

I knew this wasn't true. Didn't change the emotional reactions I had from these being internalized. Sound familiar?

Like many, these lessons created an ingrained fear. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of being labeled a racist more than tacitly supporting racism. Fear of where to even begin with gaining real knowledge. It's why so many never even begin.