I Was 'King Coon' Until I Hit Back

[Tsiyu]

21. Beautiful and true

"He said he really didn't know what he was doing or why. I never forgot that."

Bigotry makes no sense even to the bigot, once he or she is confronted with the impact their cruelty makes on the innocent victims of it.

In my memory: In the '70s they started "blockbusting" in my parents' neighborhood. I didn't understand why my father screamed at the real estate agent who knocked on our door. When the agent began threatening my dad with the spectre of "coloreds" moving next door, my dad completely lost it, yelled at the man that he was defying the law and that if he didn't leave our doorstep immediately he was going to call the feds AND the police.

My dad is a crazy Italian, but this just set him over the edge worse than normal. Later, he explained why he was angry. He told me about his growing up in the '40s with Italian and Jewish and Black friends and how the unfairness of racism and bigotry impacted him. He explained what blockbusting was and also the laws that made blockbusting illegal.

He was just in a rage that anyone would come to his door and spew that racist claptrap.

My parents live in the same neighborhood to this day, only one of a handful of white families left as all the other white families sold out. I have never forgotten my father confronting racism head on. The blockbusters never came to his door again after that.

Fast forward to 2010. I am working for an old Sewanee matriarch with "Obama" and "Eracism" stickers on her car. She has told me stories of her "people" integrating the public swimming pools in New Orleans.

I drive her to a store where she sees a mixed race child. "With all of your past and your marriages, why didn't you make that mistake?" she asks me.

"Say what?" I ask.

"Having a child with a Black man. Why didn't you do that, too?" as if her upper class ass had some checklist of wayward white womanness and I had missed a vital step.

"I can't believe you just said that," I said.

"Well," she said, uttering the age-old justification for bigotry against mixed race people, "I just think it's hard on the children. That they suffer."

"The only reason they suffer is because of attitudes like yours," I said.

She was quiet, and embarrassed, I could tell.

"Oh, yeah, " I said, pulling out of the parking lot. I was really angry by now but trying not to show it. "It sure didn't work out for Obama, did it? Imagine where he'd be if only he weren't mixed race."

Well, I lost that job and she never called me again. But screw her and her fake "tolerance." I am my father's child after all.

Bigots don't realize just how stupid they sound, do they?

Again, great read. Thank you for sharing.