My folks moved us from Pueblo, Colorado to Texarkana, Arkansas, in 1977, when I was in 8th grade. We went from high plains to high pines, and the scenery change wasn’t the only or the biggest adjustment. There was a definite culture shock. Not intrinsically bad, no, though the culture of Texarkana was definitely more closed to outsiders than the culture of Pueblo.
I’d encountered racism before, at least from a distance. In Pueblo, the two conflicting cultures were Anglo and Chicano. Chicano wasn’t and isn’t interchangeable with Mexican-American, but they were the main oppositional culture – tired of Anglo dominance in an area that had belonged to their ancestors back. In Texarkana, the chief cultural/racial friction was Black & White. It was the mid-seventies, and the foment of the sixties hadn’t completely faded. There were still plenty of battles to resolve. Still, though, I wandered around in my own little fog. I was introverted, and was equally polite to and equally oblivious with people of all races.
I learned one big lesson, though, that has stuck with me through the years. It’s not the Grand Dragons that are the problem, at least not exclusively, but the grand mothers.
One day in 8th grade, after school, I went over to a friend’s house. I’d finished my homework at school and he was going to wrap his up, then we were going to go do … whatever thirteen year old boys did then. Honestly, it was so dull, I don’t remember.
At any rate, I got there early and was directed toward the sunken den. His grandmother was there, watching the news, and I was sent in there to watch with her while he finished his homework.
It was a little eerie to start with. It’s like they made a nest for her – off to the side, but not neglected. She was in her armchair, propped between right and left by pillows, staring at the blue glow of the television.
I don’t think she even acknowledged me as I sat down. I’d met her once before and she was warm and welcoming, using all the gracious Southern manners I’d heard about on television and read about in books. She didn’t even seem to mind that I was from the highly questionable Midwest, the people of which, as far as most Southerners were concerned, were indistinguishable from Yankees. So, the grey-dark of the den was undisturbed by my arrival. Everything happening in that room worth noticing was happening on the television.
It was local news, and the next item was a piece on the upcoming elections. A businessman whose signs I’d seen around town was announcing his run for Mayor. There was a little rally downtown, and cameras were on hand. He was a well-known figure. His signs were all over town – nobody could miss him. The reportage was straight-up, and done in about a minute, then they were on to traffic or weather or whatever.
We kept sitting silently, just staring at the screen. It had to have been at least five minutes later when I glanced over at her, and her eyes jumped my direction, which surprised me to start with.
She leaned in as much as her pillows allowed and looked straight into my eyes.
“I don’t mean anything against anyone.” She gave that a moment to sink in, and probably to get some acknowledgement from me, which I probably gave. After all, who was I to accuse her, a woman I barely knew, and the matriarch of a decent, hard-working family, of meaning anything bad against anyone else? I was not only a mere child, but a stranger in a strange land as well.
Once I bobbed my head or whatever it is I did, she jabbed a seasoned finger down at the arm of her chair and continued, “I don’t mean anything against anyone … but I fail to understand why people don’t stay where they belong, why they feel they have to get involved in things that don’t concern them.”
I had no idea what to say, and no idea what expression to have on my face. I’m sure I just stared. There was this inherently sweet and kind grandmother saying something that seemed to fly hard and cold right into the face of her identity. She wasn’t even necessarily saying that this man was beneath political office, just that it didn’t concern him, that it wasn’t where he belonged, that there was some separate reality outside her white world that he inhabited. She didn’t even claim that he was some scoundrel, some ne’er do well who couldn’t be relied on. He was just other, and he didn’t have any business getting involved in running things – in telling other people how things were going to get done – not outside his own business, anyway.
I wanted to be angry. I was a very polite, but also very politically aware thirteen year old. I’d read all about the civil rights movement and Watergate and Vietnam, and had all kinds of information crammed into my head about what was good and what was bad, and I couldn’t summon a single reaction beyond surprise.
A few minutes later, my friend came in and we went off and did whatever time waste it was we did. I didn’t mention what his grandmother had said. He asked me if I talked to her and I said “Kinda” and that was it.
While we were goofing around, and later in the evening, I kept that encounter in the back of my mind. My grandmother would never have dreamt of saying – or even feeling – such a thing, at least as far as I knew. Did other grandmothers think and feel those things?
At some point, it dawned on me. From this far perspective, it seems like it came to me in a flash that very day, though maybe I simmered over it for a while. Eventually, I realized. His grandmother was the problem. She, more than anything else, was what was keeping the races divided in the south – and the north – and the Midwest – and in other places.
It wasn’t the guys burning crosses. They were a symptom of a disease. It was the sweet, kind grandmothers, the ladies who were the gentle heart of the family, who were carriers of the disease acted out in their progeny. The crabby grandfathers who hated everyone under the age of sixty, and anyone of a different color or background … it was easy to say “Well, you have to take this with a grain of salt.” But your grandmother? The woman who nurtured your parents and you and your siblings and your aunts and uncles and cousins? You were going to tell her that she was wrong? You were going to tell her that her dark and cozy den was a little more dangerous because you weren’t going to protect her from the unrest and the dangers out in the world, dangers that you were too sophisticated to take seriously.
Even if you yourself didn’t agree with what she was saying, maybe thinking “Well, she might have a point, but I haven’t had a problem with any of them …” you were still making allowances, and maybe at some point, something happens, and you think to yourself “Hmm … this guy is going to make my grandmother nervous” and from there you start to draw out new boundary lines. You want the guy, well-meaning or not, to leave your grandmother in peace, not to upset her world. But no, he’s got his agenda, which he feels is more important than your grandmother’s feelings and sense of well-being, so you dig in your heels and make ready to lash out if you need to. Maybe you start thinking about how, if “those people” would just be patient, thing would work themselves out naturally, but noooooo, they’ve got to change everything all of a sudden, and where’s that going to leave things? What right do they have to disrupt things that have been running well enough all this time?
Even as I type all these things I disagree with, the bile rises in my throat. "'Those people' have a lot of nerve trying to upset grandmothers who never hurt anyone."
But they did hurt people, directly or not, intentionally or not. Or maybe they've moved beyond that, and they only wish other people well at this point, in the grey hours of their lives.
But still we protect them. Maybe not as volatilely and reflexively as we did back in 1977, but we still do. We still cause harm by trying to protect something that's indefensible ... because our grandmothers happen to believe it ...
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