A/N: Again on going against the grain: what would you have done if you’d lived in the South during the reign of Jim Crow?  Being a white southerner, I ask myself that a lot.  And even worse: what did my family members who lived then actually do/say/believe? 

I’m frankly puzzled.  Growing up as a child of the 1990s, I was taught in school about the Evil Bad Times before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.  How the dark ages ended and the races were equal and today we’re all one big happy America.  Back Then white people put up signs in their shops that read “whites only,” kept black people from voting, and segregated water fountains and bathrooms and even schools.  When I was young I took all this at face value and patted myself on the back for being better than people with the stupid belief that skin color is an indicator of a person’s worth.  But I’ve noticed something funny in the past few years.  Where have all the racists gone?  There used to be thousands or millions of people who held beliefs in white supremacy.  Is it possible that an entire breed has died out in a few decades?

My question is not a silly one.  Think about all the shops or restaurants before the Civil Rights Act which forbade black customers.  Surely, with so many shops of this type, the people who ran them are widespread and still around today.  Have you ever met one?  Or was everyone you’ve ever asked Always Against Racism?  Sure, your mom remembers when they integrated the schools, and she loved the black kids!  They were so nice.  Sure, your English teacher’s mom confided in her that she worked in an ice cream parlor that was “whites only”.  But, wait, she quit to protest this.  OK.  Then there’s the one oddball teacher who admits to you that his father was a very vocal racist—but he was raised in the inner city and it was all because of fear.  And his son wasn’t racist, goodness me no. 

I’m a southern white girl.  Were my family members racist?

In the words of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: “Ay, there’s the rub.”  It’s all just an academic question, a lighthearted poking of fun at white hypocrisy until your family gets brought into it.  Ouch.  Your family is the blood that flows in your veins, the heritage that has been passed down to you, your way of life, your values.  My family isn’t perfect, of course; I could give you a list nearly a mile long of things I’d rather not have in my heritage, one of them being slaveholding.  Of course I don’t have any control over what my ancestors have done.  But there’s a certain stigma attached to you (or that you attach to yourself) based on your forebears’ actions.  What middle- or high-school kid doesn’t live in dread of their parents embarrassing them in front of all their friends?  I heard a motivational speaker once who touched on the topic of racism.  “Decide now where you will stand,” he said, “because when your children look back on your time in history they will either be proud or ashamed.” 

I’ve found that I really wouldn’t be traumatized by learning that most of my family members were racist—after all, they were brought up in the South, and what are the odds they would have turned against a system they were taught as “good” and “normal” all their lives?  Simply because they had the virtue of being in my family?  It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion.  Oh, except.  My Memaw.

Yeah, that’s where the trauma begins.

Memaw is my paternal grandmother, and is just about the sweetest, most kindhearted lady you could imagine.  I know I’d love her even if she weren’t my grandmother.  In addition, she is part of a dance troupe out of the YMCA; she paints and sells her works to art galleries; she keeps a rock garden.  She’s cool.  She was also born and raised in the Deep South and has lived there most of her life. 

Did Memaw believe in segregation?  Was Memaw angry when Brown v. Board of Education decreed that her children would be going to integrated schools?  Has Memaw ever used the “n” word? 

Pause.  Deep breath.  Rationalize.

Actually, to hell with rationalizations.  There are few things that I can imagine in my family which would truly cause me deep emotional trauma—apart from actually being disowned.  One of them is any sort of character blemish in my Memaw.  The thought of Memaw being anything other than sweet, kind, fair, and loving (I’ve never seen her not be all of these things) is one of them.  First because I love her very much.  And second because it makes me ask myself: if sweet, kind, fair, loving Memaw was a racist, then what would I have done had I lived back then?

Would I have had the courage to go against the grain? 

So there’s my Southern White Girl story on racism.  That’s where it hits closest to home for me, other than the occasional white/black riot at school.  (Actually, to be fair, we’ve only had one of those, it was two years ago, and the participants themselves say things have cooled down.)