Wednesday, December 6, 2017

The Family

The Family gathers and smiles and laughs and prays to God and exchanges gifts and food and doesn't just feign interest in each other's existence, it is general interest in well-being, grandmas, aunts, uncles, all wanting to see and share and eat and be merry. It's a cover like many families, like many Americans, like many white people or men, in between the bowls of mashed potatoes one uncle will talk about how 'you can't take the black out of them' as if to say the blackness is a sin itself, its very nature corrupted and criminal. Another will joke about thugs, or chicken and watermelon, and what stings you the most are your cousins and their S/Os, all younger than you, teens and 20s, nodding and laughing along, realizing they were raised that way and they will raise their kids that way and the cycle will continue, another white family feigning ignorance about racism and denying its existence while swapping jokes that violate the very people they say are not in harms way. It's an impenetrable loop and even when you and your one relative who is also aghast speak up, it is 12 against 2, and there is denial, and excuses, and 'life isn't perfect or fair' or 'the world isn't all roses' or 'I didn't even realize/think/know that was bad' and then it's just hopeless, so you excuse yourself from the table and just hope that nobody here will turn down a job application, or defend a state murder, or what have you, but deep down you know they have, and know that they won't change, because they have all been fed this from day 1 to year 60 of their existence, and your anger and frustration just brings out excuses and deflections - 'why didn't you say anything earlier? shame on you' and perhaps there is but I am not the one cracking racist 'jokes' so shame on them but they don't see it that way, because once again the world isn't fair and they aren't actually racist even though we have full control over what is fair and it is racist and we could stomp it all out if we wanted. That's the thing. Deep down the family doesn't want to. Because they are all white, there is not a single person of color here, and it's all they know, and to take that away from them - their racism, their jokes, their stereotypes - is to assault their very identity as Americans, as white Americans, namely, and that's a tear at the very fabric of this country. Because we all know, and they know, that white America feasts on this stuff, not the food and the gifts, and that power and ability is way more sacrosanct than a present or a slice of ham or God itself.

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