Everyday Black Matters
1. Despite studying 3 hours, I got a “D” on a test. My second “D” in that particular class. Arrrrgghhh.
2. Because I had to study and Dave was out of town I let Ransom watch 2 hours of TV straight. Not good. I feel deplorable for that one.
3. We also missed church. Arrrgghh.
4. I almost had to wrestle a man to the ground. Here’s the story…
Ran & I stopped in what could be termed, “the hood” to go to McDonalds on our way to Detroit yesterday. This Mickey D’s is right across the street from the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission and literally sharing a parking lot for a homeless rehabilitation center. Needless to say there are lot of homeless, handicapped & mentally unstable people who may just be ‘a little off’ who frequent the place.
This day was no different with one guy singing –quite badly- at the top of his lungs, one guy speaking in slurred speech trying to shake the hands of every woman who came in and then we have an older man of about 50 years looking like a total pimp daddy with his yellow & blue silky shirt on and matching yellow snake skin shoes.
He comes right up to Ransom & I; “well I see it’s some pretty girls all up in here today.” I ignore him. When Ran & I get up to leave he follows me out, “d*** you fine as h**.” I say thank you as non-thankfully as I could & put pep in my step. Then he gets in my face and asks for a ride home. I say no. He says he’ll pay me. I say no. I say excuse me please & I keep going. I unlock the car & as I’m getting Ran in the car seat, he gets in the front seat! He got in the front seat! Is he crazy? I said with authority, “sir, get out of my car right now. I am calling the police.” He sits and then mumbles something about me being pretty again. As I get the phone and Ransom out of the car now, he says, “c’mon b**** I’ll pay you.” I said sternly, “No, GET OUT OF MY CAR.” And then Ransom said “no, no, no, no!” And then he called him a “spoiled little sh**.”
Now at this point, all fear has left me. Most people know the scared-of-every-thing side of Grace but there is also the I-grew-up-in-the-hood-&-I-don’t-play-that-&-I-also-know-how-to-pretend-like-I’m-not-scared-at-all side of me & it came out with force. All of a sudden I felt like I was Sydney Bristow (an unstoppable CIA agent from Alias) & I might have to kick his butt to protect my son. And I was ready to get into a royal rumble if I had to.
Anyway, once he called Ransom a bad name, I threatened him with pain –and without even a smile on my face! 😉 I looked at him with a deadly serious look, “Sir, get out of my car right now or I will have to hurt you.” My plan was ….. Okay so I had no plan, but I did see a hanger in the back seat. Also, I knew someone had all ready called the police. Also, I was not afraid of him. At the very least, I always have teeth & a foot and knowledge of where it hurts. In when it comes down to it, I (don’t think) I’m not afraid to use them! 🙂
Anyway, he got out. I was really only slightly frazzled by that whole thing, but I must admit writing it out makes it seem all the more dramatic. I was more saddened by that crazy episode. Perhaps just overwhelmed at the issues that plague urban areas.
5. Ransom got his first dog bite. My sis’s dog bit him, though it didn’t break the skin at all, thank God. I just don’t want him to be terrified of dogs because he likes them pretty well now.
Last but not least… Actually the saddest of all that happened on 9.5.08
6. So, Ran & I left that crazy McDonald’s experience & went over my sis’s house (where the dog bite happened) for one of my nephew’s birthday parties. We were playing an association game and one of the names that came up was Margaret Sanger. The game referred to her as a nurse only.
I remembered that Margaret Sanger is widely known to be the founder of the American Birth Control League which eventually became & still is, a HUGE multi-billion $ corporation called Planned Parenthood.
A few years ago, I did A LOT of research on the beginning of abortion in the US for a presentation I was asked to give at WMU. Margaret Sanger as it turns out was a huge proponent of using abortion as a means of birth control but especially in the African American community. She admitted to being an advocate of “negative eugenics,” and the purity of the white race. (Eugenics being a way of slowly killing off the ‘inferior race.’ Often associated with the genocide of the Jews). Anyway, Sanger worked very hard with the American government (who provided funding!!) to make sure that abortion clinics were set up in black, red-lined (meaning blacks were forced to live there by Jim Crow laws) neighborhoods and pushed the idea that abortion was the best option for low income blacks. Her goal was not that whites should torture and lynch blacks like others were at the time but that we would kill ourselves. That we would eventually cease to exist as a race. What a woman, eh?
Well, needless to say Sanger got her wish. Since Roe V. Wade passed more than 33 years ago (1.22.73) 30 MILLION black babies have been murdered costing our community more than 4 BILLION Dollars! It’s really sad to me that abortion can have that shady of a past yet folk want to call it a “woman’s right.” It’s like people believe the same garbage they believed 150 years ago when they called it “a white man’s right,” to own, torture and enslave African-Americans. It’s a lie. It’s all just a big lie. This is another topic but why would it ever be a woman’s right to kill another woman –even if that woman is unborn? It makes no sense to me. No sense. But anyway, on to the actual sad part of this story.
So, that all flooded my memory & I said out loud, “wow, Margaret Sanger wasn’t just a nurse she is also the woman who I believe is ultimately responsible for all the Planned Parenthood’s that are 90% very strategically placed in the poorest blackest neighborhoods of the US, in which 30 million black babies have been killed.”
And my white, racist, mean brother David said, “good, ” with a look of deep satisfaction on his face.
I looked at him with disgust and anger and hurt and sadness and then he smiled and said, “I was just joking, Gracee, c’mon.”
He was NOT just joking. I told him he was a racist and that it bugged me and that it makes me not want to be around him at all. No comment.
I was also pretty sad because there sat my white mother, sister, brother-in-law, nephew and no one said anything to him. Everyone just tolerated it. And that’s the type of racist garbage I grew up with and it reminded me of being a kid and having David call me a nigger and the all the white people –my relatives-said & did NOTHING. It drives me crazy. It basically told me the lie that it’s o.k. for whites to treat blacks like crap. A lie I believed for a very long time.
Second, I was pissed because he said that in front of Ransom too, not that Ransom ‘got it’ at all but because he is going to grow up learning what racism and subtle passive racism is from his own white family and it’s a damn shame is what it is. I feel really bad for him, because I would have hoped my family would have evolved a little bit more. But no. Everyone but me was apparently speechless, & I just hope to God that they didn’t hear David, because at least they’ll have that excuse. The proper response, by the way, is, “wow, that’s horrible.”
And so yesterday, I was sad.
And feeling pretty helpless. I decided to just forgive David right then and there because you know what? Honestly it takes more work and emotions and patience to go around carrying and harboring all of that anger than to just get rid of it and give it to God. I forgive him, but I think he’s lousy sometimes.
And I guess at the end of the day, David just exposes all the racism that I believe every person in this world carries in their heart towards somebody. David is just my stupid big brother who you can count on to always say the stupidest things out loud.
But I believe we all are capable of that type of evil, those types of racist comments, remarks, activities. If you don’t think you are. You are. Own it & get over it.
I let David off the hook. I let myself off the hook & I’m letting you off the hook.
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