RP1: A Response to Pastoral

Dear Natasha Tretheway,

Please, I beg of you, explain to me how you cannot hate the South. You, a victim of the most hateful variety of speech and actions, stand firm in your love for your home, but I, who has never once been a victim to this cruelty and never will be, cannot simply forgive mine for what they have done to you. Because, when I think of Southern pride, I think of the confederate flags flying from the rooftops of everyday homes and businesses. I see them decorating back windows and t-shirts, advertisements and billboards, plastered to every surface that will hold still long enough to bear it. And if you ask, every single owner will respond the same way, “I'm proud of my Southern heritage.”

And I wish that I could ask them, “Please, for the love of your God, tell me why. Why are you proud of a history of racism, and a place built through the enslavement of others? How can you simply overlook hundreds of years when we denied humanity to so many people for nothing but a fat f*cking profit?” I wish that I could ask, but even if I did they wouldn't see the point. The amount of times I've heard, “Well I didn't do nothin'. I never owned no slaves. There aren't even any slaves anymore so why do you care? You ain't even Black” is enough to make my stomach churn until the day I die.

How can you not hate the South and its stubborn refusal to acknowledge that something is wrong? How can you not detest that people think it's okay to be racist because it's “how they was raised”? I will never forget the day an upperclassman tried to convince me that there were “two kinds of Black people", as if the other, "they", could be categorized. She explained to me that there were “African Americans and N*ggers”, and that the difference was “whether or not they knew how to act White”. She thought she understood the world because that's what her family raised her to believe. But that is no excuse. There is never an excuse to call anyone any racial slur, ever. I was raised to know that it's not okay, and that it will never be okay.

So tell me, why, when I know this to be true at the most basic part of my being, do I sit idly by when my grandmother yells the n-word at the NBA players on TV as they miss a shot? Sure, after the second or third time, she catches on to my discomfort and will stop, but no word will pass from my lips to ask her to. Why? Because she is my grandmother. She doesn't know any better, because she is from a different time. She was raised that way. But why do I give her an excuse while I judge the others so harshly? Because it's too late for her to learn to watch her tongue? She has always been this way, so it would be hard for her to change? No, because I don't want to have to confront my grandmother about such a heavy topic such as race. It's not like her racism in her own home affects anyone, right? Wrong. Her “inability” to change was what made it so easy for my little cousin to become the exact same way. I learned this as we drove through urban Mobile, Alabama. At 8 years old, and without a second thought he asked my mother, “Is this where the N*ggers live?” She corrected him strictly, "That was not a word you should ever use." The drive was quiet after that. I always wondered if he ever learned why.

No individual is a bystander. Racism is spread by word of mouth, passed down by family traditions. It continues to spread and thrive until even today it is completely ingrained into society, until racism simply is. My whole life I have lived in a place where this is the norm. Where racism is just a part of life. I hate it. I hate my home. I hate my people and what they have done to yours.

So again I must ask you, how is it that you don't hate the South? How can you look past all of this and find beauty in these places? How can you be so patient? Could you help me to do the same?