"I was raised like Paula Deen"

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/29/paula_deen_is_and_will_always_be_a_racist_partner/

I was raised like Paula Deen
Racism was so ingrained in my Southern family, they never even realized they were racist. Now we no longer speak
By Dustin Rowles

This piece originally appeared on Pajiba.


snip//

Unless you were raised by well educated people, or carpetbaggers, or the rare Southern hippie, racism was something of a default mode in the South, so casual and ingrained that most of us didn’t even realize that what we were saying was racist. I don’t know what kids North of the Mason Dixon line called each other on the playground in the 80s and 90s, but in the small-town South, kids called each other “ni**er” and “fa**ot” as easy and as casually as kids might call each other “jerks” or “dum-dum heads.” You didn’t have cooties where I grew up, you had “ni**er” cooties,” and the only names we took any real offense to were variations of “ni**er lover,” the lowest of all insults, reserved for kids who insisted they were safe when clearly the ball reached first base before they did.

The notion that my kids could say those words — words my six year old has never even heard, and hopefully will not hear until he’s studying the the Civil War and the Civil Rights era in high school — seems appalling and repulsive to me, but that was not so in the schools I attended in the South. I don’t remember ever hearing a teacher ask a student not to use those words, and there’s no way they could’ve not heard them. But then, what were teachers going to do? Raise the issue with the parents, who taught the kids those words, who would dismiss it? We knew the “N-word” in the South; it was the “R-word” that we’d never heard before: Racism.

snip//

At a certain point, there’s nothing you can do to convince people like Paula Deen, others of her generation, or even some of those of my own generation, that they are not racist. They don’t believe they are. They honestly think that having a casual acquaintance who is black absolves them. I hope to hell it’s not this way anymore in the South, but I’m guessing that it is still more like that than not in the small town I grew up in.

Some people fight it. Some people escape. I voiced my objections as long as I could, and then I left, which is either an act of sanity or of cowardice. I maintained a loose relationship with my family for a few years until I had a kid of my own. I haven’t spoken now to anyone in my family for six years, and they honestly don’t understand why. They think it’s because “the college boy thinks he’s too good for us” or because I finally got fed up with the proselytizing, which I’d never taken issue with. I feel guilty about it; I feel terrible that I’m depriving my mother of her grandchildren. But I don’t know how to explain to them that I don’t want my kids exposed to that culture of racism (and homophobia and religious intolerance). That no matter how deep your faith, no matter how generous, kind, well-mannered and decent hearted you are, you can’t really be a good person if you are defending your use of the N-word, of if you believe that gays belong in hell. I can separate the good from the bad, but I won’t ask that of my children. And it does no good for me to try to convince my family of this. How do you argue with a racist about their racism when they honestly don’t believe they are racist? It’s a futile argument, the very one that the public is having with Paula Deen.

Paula Deen will continue to make the argument of denial, and she may continue to insist that she believes everyone should be treated the same, claiming it’s the way she was raised. She will believe it so deeply that both she — and the hundreds of thousands of her supporters — will feel crucified by those who pull their support. Paula Deen is a racist, but because of the way she was raised, she may never realize it. So how can you deliver an honest apology when you don’t even understand when you’ve done something wrong?

[chervilant]

1. And this is the fundamental reason

her "apologies" smack of insincerity.

[Gman]

2. Having grown up in the Deep South

In the late 50's and 60's, I understand your feelings. But I think you do your kids a disservice. They need to know racism is alive and still very healthy. It would be quite a learning experience for them on what it looks like and how and why it's wrong.

[greymattermom]

3. racism vs apartheid

I live in Kansas City and in Atlanta. In KC, I rarely see any AA folks. Racism isn't spoken, but apartheid is practiced. The east of Troost line is still alive and well, and the only black folks my kids met in school were the children of professional sports players. In Atlanta, overt racism is everywhere, but there are huge areas of the city that are diverse, and the leaders of the civil rights movement are still highly respected. Which is worse? I'm not sure.

[tularetom]

4. We never realized how racist my mother was

Until she died. She would never have uttered the n-word, she considered herself too well bred for that. But she was the only person I ever heard, after about 1970, still using the expression "darkies" to describe African Americans. She was still using it the last time I saw her at Christmastime, 2002.

But more than that, it was the way she managed to inject race into every conversation. She could not watch a black performer on TV without commenting on the color of his skin, and as she got older she would describe her encounters with a group of "them" at the grocery store. She stopped attending church when the congregation became a bit more diverse. We all just rolled our eyes, including my dad. He'd been hearing the same stuff, of course, for years.

And yet she took great offense when one of us would jokingly refer to her as a racist. She would describe in detail all the little black kids who were her playmates when she was a child. Of course, those little black kids were the children of people who worked on my granddads farm but that seemed to be lost on her.

She was a wonderful mom, particularly when we were kids. She's been gone ten years now and of course I miss her. But I'd be lying if I claimed she had ever evolved on the subject of race. It was still the early 1920's in rural Tennessee to her.

[ginnyinWI]

13. my mom too.

She's 83. She does not use the "n" word. But she is very aware of race; it isn't an actor, it is a "black actor". White is the default and black is the exception. It's the way some in his generation were raised--and she was raised in Wisconsin with a German heritage, not in the South. I was raised to believe that African Americans had certain qualities that made them fit for certain jobs--either in sports, entertainment or menial work. Never anything that would require a lot of intellect. I got as far as high school (in the 1960s) before being corrected by a classmate, also white and of German heritage but who was obviously taught very differently than me at home!

My parents and grandparents were all nice enough people but did all have this attitude. There were no African Americans in our town or schools and they didn't know any personally, so the attitude persisted. Their term was "coloreds" most of the time.

[Dawson Leery]

5. k/r

[Anansi1171]

6. I appreciate, as an AA, how complex and difficult this is for everyone- especially the children...

, or siblings or friends of truly unrepentant bigots. Its a perspective I think should get much more discussion in the mainstream!

[yurbud]

14. thanks for that. Over the years, when I describe what the Southern side of my family says...

some people would say I should cut them off.

But that wouldn't change them one bit.

If I saw them act as bad as they talked or spew that racist stuff directly at black people, that would have been something else, but they never did.

[Rozlee]

7. I guess everyone from the pre-segregationist South has the same story.

We're Hispanics, but even we've been exposed to that. In the small rural town in South Texas we lived in, white people lived in one part of town, Hispanics in another and African-Americans in their own part. The old timers would tell us stories of how the KKK would show up on horseback on election day and ride through the minority neighborhoods, cracking whips and intimidating people to try and keep them from voting. They weren't as bad in the Hispanic neighborhoods; there were a lot of migrant workers and they didn't want to scare them off so that they wouldn't come back for next year's crop, but they'd be in full form in the black neighborhoods. Things seemed to have mellowed out quite a bit in the 1980s and 90s. But, I should have known better. Everything was going great while the African-American man in the White House was the chauffeur and not the President. All it took was for "one of them" to step into the highest office of the land for racists to get a gut punch and realize that, yes, their carefully constructed world was really over. But, what can you expect? It's been over a hundred and fifty years since the Civil War, but these people have never gotten over it and to them, the federal government is the entity responsible for their humiliation in that war, the force that set African-Americans free, de-segregated them and now, has one of them running the nation.

[Hissyspit]

8. My mother was raised in the South in the 40s, 50s and 60s. She NEVER

used those words and taught her kids never to use those words and to treat EVERYONE with respect.

Apologist bullshit.

[babylonsister]

9. The guy who wrote this 'divorced' his family, so I

don't know about apologist bullshit. Maybe just trying to make sense of the mindset. And your mom was raised in the south; were her folks from the south? Either way, she sounds like a gem, Hissy.

[NOLALady]

10. I understand about the teachers...

"I don’t remember ever hearing a teacher ask a student not to use those words, and there’s no way they could’ve not heard them. But then, what were teachers going to do?"

On my son's first day in first grade, he came home and told me that he had a bad day. He said the kids wouldn't call him by his name even after he told them his name. He didn't know anything about the N word at that time. This was in the late 80's at a Catholic school.
That happened on a Friday evening. My husband took off from work the following Monday morning and we were in the Principal's office. They tried to direct us to his subordinates but hubby wasn't having any of it. They said they would talk to the kids and their parents. They said they'd never had 'those' problems before. I told them that they were wrong as I'd discussed this with other parents who described the racism they'd encountered at this Catholic School, but chose not to complain.
I suggested, among other things, that they talk to the teachers as I found it hard to believe that none of the teachers were aware.

There were no more overt incidents, thank heavens.

[cojoel]

11. I grew up in suburban St. Louis

In the spring of 1971 I was in 7th grade. The last class of the day was English. One relatively slow day one of the other boys made a sign that said on one side "I hate nigers" and "Nigers are animals" on the other. The teacher saw the sign, took it from the student and took it to his desk, marked it up pointing out the misspellings with a big red 'F', put an 'F' in the grade-book for that student, and returned the marked up paper to the student.

It was only when I was older that I realized that was pretty awesome.

[wisteria]

12. Nonsense. This article claims that people never change or evolve.

I am not what I once was, I don't believe in some of the things I did 20 or more years ago, and my veiw points have changed. My envirnoment growing up, shapped some of my beliefs, but I have grown up, lived in the world, and learned to get along, accept and change.
Paula Dean has now become a victim, and I think the treatment she has received, and is continuing to receive is misplaced and a sad commentary on peoples' unwillingness to forgive, forget, and move on.

[blondie58]

15. This is a great.post!

Yeah, I felt that way, too- until she allegedly.started blaming it on the.Jews.

I have a good friend.who.was born in CO, but.raised in MS. She.considers herself a Southern.girl first.
Had a bumper sticker "American by.birth. Southern by.the grace of.God.". I went home with.her several years ago, and it was an eye opener. She and her mom say.many racist r things lik,e "that's mighty.white of.you"
For myself, having lived my entire life in CO, I was a little surprised. We still have a ways to go.
I.grew up in the.suburb of Lakewood. Never even met a black.person until I was 20. I remember thinking what.pretty.skin she had.

[Arugula Latte]

16. I believe Paula Deen deserves all the criticism/sanctions she's gotten

However, there was a satirical article where she blamed the Jews. I don't think there was a "real news" one. However, that's not outside the realm of possibility with her, which is why I cringed when I saw the satire.

Satire from Daily Currant:
http://dailycurrant.com/2013/06/28/paula-deen-blames-the-jews-for-firing/

[blondie58]

17. thanks for the clarification, Arugula Latte.

It was irresponsible of me not.to.double check. I feel sorry for her.

I wonder how long before our country can be a little more mature.