Dear Mom, Yeah, It's Racist.

Recently I opened an email from my mom. And felt so sick I couldn't sleep.

It was titled What Every White Person Needs to Hear. I knew I shouldn't open it. I never open them. But we'd recently had an okay conversation about race, and I thought maybe I could use it as a jumping off point for another conversation. Get an idea of where she's coming from.

I shouldn't have opened it.

And now, I can't erase from my brain what my mother, my children's grandmother, really thinks. What she thinks I should think. It was pretty awful. A video, a Black guy, a pastor at some Harlem church. J@mes D@vid M@nning. I won't link to him.

Think Rush Limbaugh + internalized oppression, and imagine how that might look. Makes Clarence Thomas look like a progressive Panther. The things this guy was saying, the words he used, the way he stirred White people to action, to knock the chips right off those Black folks' shoulders! Knock 'em OFF!! To hear this man telling White people they didn't need to put up with the attitudes and arrogance of Black people, that they're justified in stepping up to do whatever needs to be done in order to feel comfortable around Black people, to stop walking on eggshells ... I don't even want to write more about what he said.

 It was sickening, in a literal way.  It made me wonder, what has happened in that man's life?

When something like that floats around the Interwebs, you can click it closed, shake your head, and move on. When something like that comes from your mother ... what do you do with that?

I know my mom would say it's not racist, it's someone's opinion. She'd say we're all the same, all given the same opportunities, that race shouldn't be a factor. In fact, how can it be racist, if a Black man said it? How could I possibly find fault with it?

It's weird how people are willing to listen to Black man's point of view, even use the speaker's race to validate his words, IF it's supporting what they already think. There could be 1,000 other people of color with studies and evidence and data, with researched, logical, statistically supported points saying the opposite, and the Right will come back with that doesn't count; they're just saying that because they're Black. They're biased. But let one Black man come along and echo their bootstrapping, assimilation, racism-is-over, the-system-is-fine rhetoric, let one Black man come along and say that you don't have to change anything, that it's Black people who need to do the changing, and watch how quick they now laud that Black man's point of view.

Yes, I've let her know how offensive the religopolitical email stream is to me. I've let her know it doesn't help to "bring me back to the Light", and if anything, pushes me irreconcilably farther from it. I've let her know that the racial "jokes" and commentaries are hurtful and damaging. That I don't want to see them. I've said to her, Mom, your grandchildren are Black ... they are not exceptions, they are the people targeted in these emails. I've written her long and heartfelt letters on more than one occasion asking her to stop forwarding things to my work email. She finally did, but I think it was more about inappropriate use of state resources threatening my job rather than the fact that it was hurtful to me. When I wrote to her I did not tit for tat. I've never sent her anti-conservative, anti-religion emails in return. Not once. I've asked her to please respect my values and beliefs as I have respected hers. I've done unto others, and I'm not the Christian here.

And still, she sends these things to my home email. Why? Seriously, Mom ... why?

My mom used to be a left-wing, war-protesting agnostic. Then she was a mainstream caring Christian. Now ... somehow my parents have come to be of similar thoughts as the Birthers and Tea Baggers. It's taken me some time to admit that to myself. How do I reconcile that?

She's my mother. I love her. I miss her. A lot. She was a fantastic mom, I had a good childhood. If you've got some image of a crochety, mean old lady stewing with hate in her housedress, you'd be wrong. Someone knowing nothing other than The Emails, wouldn't know the whole of her. My mom is lovely, young-looking, with a radiant smile and laughing eyes. My mom is hilariously funny. She's kind and smart. And yeah, she was a big reason why I came up believing racial prejudice was a bunch of bullshit. How does that change so drastically?

And it's more complicated: my mom was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis years ago. Stress can easily present in the form of physical exacerbations, causing the MS to hit her body harder, even to the point of hospitalization. I can not be a cause of additional stress for my mom. So a big lay-it-on-the-line discussion is not happening here.

I don't have the $ to fly me and the kids out for regular visits. My mom can not travel. She's an early-to-bed person, I'm always out late for work or community meetings or kids' sports, plus I'm on the wrong end of the time zones. So we do weekend morning phone calls. Not even every weekend.  Not even every month.

It's hard to discuss things like race on weekend morning phone calls from opposite ends of the country. From opposite ends of the political, religious, and ideological spectrums. Without causing stress that could affect her.

But it is so deeply hurtful. It hurts me to my core. I look at my children, I think of the things they have experienced, that they will experience, and it just kills me to know what my mom thinks White people need to know. And I don't know that there's much that can be done. Which makes me incredibly, broken-heartedly, sad.