My Grandma is a Racist?

I've just released a book of short stories, and "My Grandma is a Racist" is one that means a lot to me.

It's not personal in the sense of family history--though I did have a grandmother who didn't like blacks, Jews, or Catholics--and another who didn't like hippies. These very complex, loving, interesting women harbored many prejudices as many of us do today. But this is not their story.

The setting is the Bush/Kerry election of 2004, when America was taking sides on the Iraq War and Swift Boat Veterans. It's the story of a little girl, Wendy Redbird Dancing, trying to make sense of her mother and grandmother's daily battle over politics. And it's also the story of what happens when no one is looking after this particular child.

Racism in the story is overt in some moments and covert in others. It's conscious and subconscious, as much as every moment in American history is laced with hyper-awareness of whether you are black, white, brown, yellow, or some mix thereof.

Don't think it's so? Please do a family history and place it against a timeline of civil rights landmarks for the last 150 years. You'll see members of your family living through some strange and terrible times, whether it touched your family directly in traumatic ways or not. Someone may have an opinion, if not fought, like my ancestor, on one side of the Civil War. If you don't wake up aware of your particular skin tone, chances are you walk the world with some amount of racial privilege. Even in this post-racial society, we can't deny that walking into some places as the only white, black, or minority of the particular context, that there are different permissions given. Just the other day I was told that I as a tall white woman will be treated differently in India when I travel there this February. In other words, my risk of assault is lowered for a number of reasons. One of them is the colonial history of British oppression, white on brown.

Today, as President Barack Hussein Obama is inaugurated into his second Presidency, we know that America has done something historic in voting him in once and then again. We know it is a particularly special day that his inauguration occurs on the Dr. King holiday, because no matter what your politics, Obama has that content of character that gets certain things done. There will be historic legislation and events for historians to evaluate; it's not a do-nothing presidency. We can judge him for those actions and not for his blackness. Dr. King may not applaud today's gun violence nor the recent wars or massive uptick in poverty, but I do believe he would applaud the fact we can judge Barack the man with a different bar than many would have back in 1968.

And back to timelines--'68, the year King was shot, was the year I was born.

"Midrift" is another story in the collection, written from the perspective of a black woman, by yours truly, a white woman. I was told back in 2004 while workshopping this story that "You can't write this." I did anyway, and no doubt I will offend both white and black and perhaps others, too, in taking this risk.

Good writing starts a conversation. I hope I've done this. And I invite you to take a chance on my characters who like to stir things up and out of the complacent daily grind. Art for life's sake.

Today, this holiday, I will take inventory of my service to others, as King would have us do. I'll take inventory of my prejudices and the breadth of my mind, treating this as a New Year's Day to be a better person this 2013. I have a hand in this historical timeline, and I hope to leave a mark that helps our progress as a human race--one people, under God, and indivisible, no matter how hard we try to tear ourselves apart.

What is your mark, and what do you want it to be?

The Flat and Weightless Tang-Filled Future is available through the Kindle select program, viewable on Kindle and with the Kindle app on iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac, Blackberry, and Android phones.

Thoughts on Seeing Dr. King's Memorial

He was part of a Movement of hundreds of years long, yet we must always build a Monument to one Man. I wonder what Dr. King would have said about that.

He was a writer.

He was not a drum major but a peacemaker, preacher, and pavement pounder. He was an organizer and a thinker and a dreamer.

As he wrote so well: "...let us see that we all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade."

If you don't think this speech is for you, read it and think about your car shopping and your response to advertising. Read it and think about your children. Read it and think about yourself. King's words could have been written on the verge of our recent economic collapse.

I like that in this country, we can edit monuments.

Writing Prompts:

• What do you believe needs a monument today? What person, movement, place, or thing deserves recognition? Whom or what do you admire most? What will be the inscription?
• What has too many monuments in our society and needs less attention?
• Read about the development of the monument--the origins of the idea, the fundraising, the design, the building--and ask yourself what you have learned about monument making in America. You can use sites such as the history as found at the Memorial website and at this Telegraph article. Do more research till you get the full picture, and ask yourself what is "American."
• Should the Dr. King Memorial be edited? Other monuments have been. How accurate must monuments be? How much are they about ideas rather than facts?
• Read Dr. King's speech, "The Drum Major Instinct," and write a letter to yourself about where in your life you could be less "all about me."
• Read the inscription on the monument (as created in 2011) and discuss why its excerpting is inappropriate or appropriate, just or unjust. What difference does the original context make? Should the visual and spatial concerns of the architect and sculptor matter? Should the spirit of the man who spoke the words matter more?
• Read Dr. King's speech and write a letter to a leader or other public figure who could use a dose of the message. Keep Dr. King in mind as you craft your words and tone. Advise this person who influences so many as to how he or she might be a better role model.