Didn't almost all of us, Obama's age and up, hear our grandparents

[pnwmom]

and older relatives say racist things? And didn't we love them anyway, while recognizing that what they said was wrong?

But think how much more painful it was for Obama to hear these statements, since they were directed at people who looked just like HIM.

I thought Obama's full statement about his grandmother and Wright was breathtaking in its clarity and its universality. The only problem now is that parts of the media are reducing it to a meaningless sound bite, with Obama saying that he wouldn't reject either Wright or his grandmother -- while editing out Obama's explanation for why this is so.

[Blue_Roses]

1. I thought he did awesome explaining the basis

for his feelings on the issue.

The pundits who do the soundbytes are having a hard time going positive. After 7 years of dimson, they are lost for the appropriate words.

[roguevalley]

31. I didn't hear it from my parents or grandparents on either side.

but my Uncle Vern ... now that's another story.

[emilyg]

2. Never heard it from my grandparents or parents.

I never would speak like that - a slap across the mouth would have been immediate.

[pnwmom]

5. Then you are lucky. I grew up near a big northern city and am a few years

older than Obama. Racism was still prevalent, at least among the older generations. And it was often expressed virulently during the upheavals of the 60's.

[ginnyinWI]

8. me too

I'm 9 years older and grew up in Wisconsin, no less, and still heard racial slurs from my white parents and grandparents. I thought everybody talked that way--didn't know any different until high school.

[emilyg]

19. My teen years were spent in N.Y.

Heard it often, too.

[democrattotheend]

3. Not my grandparents, but my great-grandfather

I'm 24, and my grandparents are as enlightened as can be (they'd even accept me if I were gay, and I was the only one in my freshman seminar class in college to be able to say that about my grandparents). But not long before he died, we visited my great-grandfather in his nursing home, and my brother and I were shocked to hear him use the N-word and complain about the fact that some of the nurses were black. It was disturbing, but I recognized that he was from a different time and there wasn't much we could do to change his mind at this stage.

[pnwmom]

9. Right. Your great-grandfather was in the generation I'm talking about.

And I'm sure your parent loved him, even while knowing the things he was saying were wrong.

My mother-in-law is in her nineties, and often makes racist and homophobic comments. There's no point in arguing with her, it just makes her go on longer. But, from the beginning, I've explained to my children why what she is saying is wrong, and why I just change the subject when she gets started.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

4. I loved my grammy dearly but she was racist as the day is long.

I remember one day in the car, when she rebuked me for putting coins in my mouth. "Stop that! BLACK people might have been handling those things!" A few years later, when there was a story in the gossip columns about Joyce DeWitt (Three's Company actress) dating LeVar Burton (Roots actor), she said that she hoped that Joyce never worked in Hollywood again. But this same woman took care of my sister and me throughout our parents' bitter divorce, taking on extra work as a dog groomer despite her advancing age.

She was a fighter and a groundbreaker. The first woman in her town to learn to drive in the '20s. She left her first husband, my grandfather, back in the early '30s. She risked ostracism by her family and community but did so because he was a controlling asshole. She was a feminist role model for me but her views on race left a lot to be desired. I loved her dearly and cannot imagine rejecting her because she didn't live up to modern day standards on race relations. I knew she was wrong about that.

[Birthmark]

6. Nope

Never from my grandparents, nor my father. Mom...yeah, she was (and is) a racist.

[Straight Shooter]

7. No, I didn't love them anyway.

Obama's grandparents were very good to him, his grandmother made him an exception to the rule. I wonder how good they would have been to him if he were an acquaintance and not a relative.

[democrattotheend]

34. An exception to what rule?

[DesertFlower]

10. i'm old enough to be obama's mother.

back in '59-'60, my first husband lived in a neighborhood in brooklyn that was changing. there was a "black church" on the block -- not really a church -- it was a store where services were held. i can't tell you how many times garbage cans would be thrown through the glass. these people weren't bothering anyone -- all they wanted was a place to worship god.:-(

i'm thankful that my parents were not racist in any way.

[pnwmom]

11. You were blessed to have parents like that in those times. n/t

[LittleClarkie]

12. My Grandmother called little black children "pickaninnies"

And interracial couples bugged my dad some, though that was early when I was pretty young that I remember hearing him say that. I'm not sure what he thought later in life.

[BuyingThyme]

13. That could make for a very effective line of inquiry

for Dems who debate Pukes on the talking-head shows.

Every time a Puke brings up Obama's decision to stand by his preacher, a Dem can bring up the Puke's decision to stand by his or her racist parents -- the people who likely provided the inspiration for their Pukehood.

[pnwmom]

15. Interesting thought. Obama made the connection.

But now it's going to be up to all the rest of us to help people understand that we ALL do this -- love other people, and love ourselves, in spite of real flaws.

[gort]

14. Let me list the racists in my family...

My Father, both Uncles, my Grandmother and many cousins.

We can also include my Dad's co-workers, his friends, business associates and clients.

My father laughed when Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated. I was 7. The towering man I looked up to shrunk before my eyes.

I still love him.

I hate him for making me laugh at racist jokes as I was growing up.

Yet, I still love him.

For me, that was what I connected with during Barack's speech. For those it didn't touch, I hope it is because they were never a victim of racism or of having their loved ones try to indoctrinate them into the hateful burning sin that is racism. I envy those who didn't grow up with it.

[pnwmom]

17. I do have trouble understanding why anyone who read or heard Obama's

full statement about Wright and his grandmother wasn't touched by it.

How they could be oblivious as to how awful it must have been for Obama, a black boy, to hear these sentiments coming out of his grandmother's mouth.

Even if they didn't have racist grandparents themselves, how could they not understand that?

[boppers]

16. pnwmom, it's regional

http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/blaktime.html

The PNW has had some... issues.

[pnwmom]

18. I'm sure it's regional, but I grew up in the midwest, not here.

My experience of the Seattle area is that it's a lot more progressive than much of the midwest, racially and otherwise.

[lligrd]

20. It Was An Awesome Speech That Anyone With An Open Mind

and an ounce of compassion found very moving. Obama wasn't my first choice but I am proud to have him as my choice now. GOBAMA!

[VotesForWomen]

21. us gay people have been there and done that; you don't choose your relatives; you do choose your chu

church. there's quite a difference.

[pnwmom]

22. The Sunday sermons are actually a small part of why most people choose

a church.

I'm a Catholic woman with a gay Catholic father. Have we heard lots of things we disagreed with in Church, or more often, from the Church hierarchy? You betcha. Have we rejected the Church entirely? No. Instead of leaving the Church to the naysayers, we'd rather stay there and work to change it from the INSIDE. Why should we leave all the good stuff -- the lay people, the social action activities, and the sacraments -- to the hardliners who want to claim it all for themselves?

[better tomorrow]

23. eenie, meenie, minee, moe...catch a.....

*bleep* by the toe, if he hollers let him go, eenie, meenie, minee, moe....you fill in the blanks. That was a VERY COMMON saying in my generation (I am 56) when we were growing up and choosing who would be "IT" in a game of tag. And, I grew up in NW Pennsylvania, not the South. It was taught, accepted and promoted by our parents. Those are the older white voters who are voting for Hillary because they just never saw the light.

I remember bussing and segregation in the 1950's and the fact that my town of 10,000 had only one black family living in it and they were driven out. That town today still is racist and that is why I don't live there anymore. My neighbors now are Vietnamese, Colombian, and Puerto Rican and my favorite "teacher pet students" that I ever taught in school were BiRacial and Philipino.

Change in my generation IS possible but it will take work, patience, and continuing education....of the white older folks.

[pnwmom]

24. Funny you should mention that.

You know how kids get the Pledge of Allegiance mixed up, with all the strange words? Well, I used to say, "catch a nickel by the toe." It didn't make sense, how you could catch a coin by the toe, but I never questioned it. (Or maybe I thought it meant "catch a nickel with a toe"?)

I did hear the N word being used around me (mostly by my grandfather), but I never made the connection for some reason.

[FlaGranny]

25. I learned that poem as

"catch a tiger by the toe." When I got a little bit older I heard the other version, but certainly not from my parents. My Dad was born in 1895 and my mom was born in 1906. They were not racists. As I grew up I discovered how unusual they were in that time. I've never heard racist comments from my brother or sister either and I've never heard them from my kids. Aunts, uncles, and cousins, especially on my mother's side, well - they are ALL racists, though they would never admit to it, and they are all "born again" Christians. I never could figure out how such good Christians could be so racist and non Christ-like, but it does seem to be a common thing.

[Crunchy Frog]

26. I learned it as "catch a tiger by the toe".

Never heard the other version. Never even knew about it until reading your post just now.

[bklyncowgirl]

29. You must have grown up in a P.C. neighborhood. In Brooklyn back in the 60s we used the "N" word

I can remember my mother telling me that this was a low class word to use and to "tiger" or "nickel" or risk getting a mouthful of Ivory soap.

My family were pretty ambivalent about race. Growing up in New York, the blacks were another group that weren't their Irish Catholic friends no more despised or loved than the Jews or the Italians. Most of the men in the family spent time down south during World War II and were shocked by the institutionalized racism. My mother recalls my father dragging her to the front of the bus--she'd wanted to sit in the back but since all black people had to sit behind any white person that meant that all of the black folks on the bus would have to stand. An uncle of mine once volunteered to play on a black unit's team when their shortstop had to go tend bar in the officer's club--he couldn't see this unit having to throw the game. The black team won and that night my uncle got a visit from a group of, shall we say Southern Gentlemen. Fortunately the guys in his unit stood up for him.

These eye openers didn't mean that these same guys didn't do their best to keep black people from joining THEIR unions when they got home from the war or exclaiming angrily while watching the Civil Rights movement unfold on their television screens. My dad had black friends at work but saw these guys as exceptions.

We had many lively arguments about race, in my family, let's put it that way.

[truedelphi]

33. Arguments in my household too

BTW I really like yr tale of the uncle playing on the black team. Good for him!

[juajen]

32. Funny. Tiger really wouldn't make sense, since the rest

of the rhyme was "If he hollers, make him pay, 15 dollars every day."

[bowens43]

27. I know I did. both my grandfather and my father. nt

[YankeyMCC]

28. Certainly

and I've had to explain to people such as my mother and ex father-in-law that they had to censor themselves around my son and explain to my son when they slipped.

It is not easy but it's part of facing the truth and being human and having the courage and strength to make things better the next generation.

[Medusa]

30. Family, friends, coworkers still do.

and that's why this speech was important.