history

Coexist?

by kiltfan

My desire to punch Nazis is at considerable odds with my very liberal, tree-hugging, tie-dyed upbringing. It’s not like I could actually punch anybody, not with these gimpy hands, but I find that I don’t have a problem with the idea of socking a fascist right in the nose. That may say as much about me as it does about them, I suppose, but I think it says more about my being just plain over ignoring them, pretending they don’t want to subjugate, or terminate, those they find inferior, and that they aren’t really a threat.

Make no mistake, what we saw in Charlottesville, VA is just the beginning. I fervently hope that all of this bold, new action on the part of white supremacists is the beginning of their downfall, but I’m afraid that they will be taking a lot of collateral damage with them before they are crammed back under their muddy little rocks. It’s too much to hope that they will ever be gone completely, but it would sure be nice to make them ashamed to show their faces.

I am a middle aged, white woman, whose ethnic background is best described as “people from places where the sun doesn’t shine.” Seriously…Ireland, Germany, Czechoslovakia. I’ve yet to have a DNA profile done, but I’m guessing the percentage of my ancestry that comes from places that make melanin is about 1%. White. My husband’s ancestry is similar, and we managed to create a child whose skin tone is best described as “alacasper.” She’s almost translucent. She doesn’t even tan. I mean, we live in Oregon, but we do have summers, and this kid just doesn’t seem to darken.

I live in a state with one of the lowest percentage of people of color in the country. When Oregon became part of the Union, in 1859, it was illegal for black people to live here. Not just to not own land, but to reside within its borders. That didn’t change until 1926. My grandmother was born here in 1914, so she remembers a time (yes, she’s still alive) when she had never seen a black person. My mother and I were also born here, and I have always loved Oregon, but being white, I had no idea that it wasn’t normal to have so few people of color in my community.

It was a blessing to me that my mother exposed us to all sorts of folks when we were kids. She never made disparaging remarks about the gay couples we saw at the park, and when we made friends with the black kids around the block, she made a point of getting to know their parents, just as she would with any of the families whose homes we spent time in. None of this was unique to me as a child. It was only as I matured that I realized how different my childhood might have been. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that my grandmother wasn’t as open-minded as my mother. She had some regrettable terms for people of color, and my mom had some experiences while out in public with her that could have gone badly, because Grammy’s stage whisper wasn’t well filtered.

My state, and my country, have a long way to go. Portland, Oregon is the whitest big city in the country. The majority of brown skinned folks in the state are from south of the US border, and are either descendants of, or current, guest workers, upon whom we depend to bring in the millions of dollars of crops grown in the Willamette Valley. Black people are very rare, unfortunately. I can’t imagine how daunting it must be to be a POC moving to this area for the first time.

Of course, because of my privilege, I am ashamed to say I was not “woke” to much of Oregon’s history until far too late in my life. It is certainly not something we were taught in our history classes, or even in my daughter’s, but it should be. I am currently struggling with the need to stay informed, vs. the need to keep myself sane. I hate the thought of tuning out, which is a privileged thing to do, but I also recognize that because of other factors in my life, I may need to pull back from the 24 hour news cycle. Maybe cut down to 21 and see how it goes.

So, I don’t think I’ll be punching anybody in the near future, but I have to be honest and say, if the opportunity arose, and I were at an event were things got heated, I would probably be okay with holding the coat of someone else who would.