How Trump Ruined My Relationship With My White Mother

[MrScorpio]

Panama Jackson
Today 9:30am



Panama Jackson and his mama at Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, Mich., circa 1983 (courtesy of Panama Jackson)

Like most of America, I’ve had a week. Whereas Charlottesville, Va., touched off a week of necessary discussions, debates and arguments centering largely on our president’s ignorance and emboldening of the very real problems in America, I’ve had exhausting, draining and, ultimately, disappointing arguments about America’s race problem within my own house with my mother.

You see, my mother (and aunt) came to visit me from Michigan for a week to spend time with three of her grandbabies. Full disclosure: My mother voted for Donald Trump. She’s also white. And she and her (white) husband are members of the National Rifle Association, own two small businesses—including a gun shop—and were actually screwed by Obamacare. In short, my mother is probably what a typical, white Midwesterner looks like on paper.

Except, she’s not. She’s an immigrant. She moved to the United States from France in 1970 when she was (I believe) 13 years old. My family emigrated from France in search of new opportunities and landed in Washtenaw County, Mich., living in various cities around Ann Arbor, Mich., before settling in the Michigan city of Milan (pronounced My-lin). When my mother got to America, she knew very little English. When she was 18, she joined the U.S. Army and met my father, a black American from Alabama, while they were both stationed in the Panama Canal Zone.

That union birthed two children—me and my younger sister, who was born at the University of Michigan Medical Center. We are biracial, but we are black. Because life happens, we spent our early years with our mother, but when I was 6 (and my sister was 3), we were sent to live with our father in Frankfurt, Germany, where he was stationed. From age 6 until I graduated from high school, I lived with my father and mostly spent summers visiting my mother in Michigan.

https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/how-trump-ruined-my-relationship-with-my-white-mother-1797935049

[SweetieD]

1. Nothing about his story is surprising or shocking. His mother is probably a racist too. You can

be racist and have sex with other races, slave owners did it, segregationists did it. Many just considered their half black offspring as exceptions to the rule, and some didn't even do that.

and I doubt this is his first wake up call about his mom. His first wake up call should have been when she sent him off to live with his black dad when he was 6 and moved on with her life here.

[demigoddess]

2. Or she could just be one of those women who take on the coloring of the man they are

married to or with. It is kind of like that is all they hear out of someone they care for so they adopt the partner's opinions. Also it seems like she fell for the propaganda against Hillary. Spouting those lines probably so she will feel 'in' with people. Insecure people do that.

[JHan]

3. I've had conversations like this with Trump supporters.

And a few relatives of mine who supported Brexit and the race baiting they rationalized.

"I can’t sit and actively engage with a person—even if it is my mother, whose blood is running through my body—if she doesn’t care about me, my story or what I live through. If she can’t see past her own appreciation for a bigoted, dangerous man, who, because of the position people like her have placed him in, has the ability to do significant damage to my civil liberties, then I don’t know what place she can have, reasonably, in my life. It’s sad. It’s disappointing. It’s my mother."

Someone in the comments section posted "blood is not thicker than safety.” - ain't that the truth. For the author, the conflict is only too real precisely because he is mixed, which can end up being a double edged sword.

Sometimes you have to let people go, including relatives.

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R