So after law school, I basically continued in my delusional state for a couple of years. And then, I had a major a-ha moment. One day my whole family happened to be in town for some family event. My mom, my stepbrother and my nephew were out and about and stopped at a local country club to buy a shirt that my nephew wanted. When my stepbrother and nephew went into the clubhouse to buy the shirt, they were refused with a lame excuse (either the store was closed or not open to the public or some such nonsense). But when my mom went in five minutes later, she had no problem buying the shirt.
What I remember most was when they came home and told us the story. Every white person in the room was outraged, ready to write nasty letters to whomever we could think of in angry protest. Every black person in the room sort of shrugged their shoulders and said "yep - that happens" I started to realize that I had no concept of what it really meant to be black in America, day in and day out. What it was like to live with a thousand little cuts that, alone, were meaningless but that combined were enough to create a protective callous on your soul.
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Ok, first, didn't know you had a blog-looking forward to reading. Second, I am startled by this post because I was thinking the same thing with the discussion on APC of AA families being denied for adoption-it's all the white people who are up in arms saying that it's a rights violation and everything else. The AA families, for the most part, are just trying to figure out how to navigate this turn of events.
I have a couple of AA friends who have adopted from China, and I am very saddened by the news-but I was struck by the dynamics of the discussion. ~lmc
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