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Reply to "The Consequences of Being Openly Anti-racist?"

Hi Pamela,

I think that children growing up in a 'overtly Racist family' want acceptance from the family unit, just as children in a partially covertly Racist family want to be accepted by the family unit, as do children in a Non-Racist household. It has also been noted that it takes a whole village to raise a child, but our 'individualistic culture' has some influence on that too. 

My father didn't become 'overtly racist' until he transitioned from working as a machinist, in a union shop, to becoming/working as a Deputy Sheriff during much of the 'Urban Strife' of the early 1960's. Perhaps his alcohol consumption was a mitigating factor. I think my mother was appalled by that previously unseen side of him-as she never spoke disparagingly of anyone's ethnicity (and our church Pastor-where my mother was an active church member, assisted a Black Family that wished to purchase a home near our neighborhood, but Realtors and Banks had basically "Red-Lined' the purchasers to being white, so our Pastor 'bought' the house for them), as well as that 'side' of my father that cheated on my mother for three years before her suicide- when I was 15. My father remarried less than two months later, ...and soon after, I moved away to a very liberal state-run Youth Home, located almost in the heart of our urban Black Community (I lived next door to Eddie "Son" House, there). My younger sister continued to reside in my father & step-mother's household just a while longer, and I had a couple of occasions to hear her utter 'racial epithets', but she 'moved' to my Uncle and [step-] Aunt's in another state, and there was no overt or covert racism in that household, and my sister was 'discouraged' from talking that way in that household.

Regretably, Oppression can be "trans-Generational", as trauma is. And racism may be more noticeable where substantial numbers of families, even whole villages, and geographic portions of our nation... adopt an overt Racism...

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