THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 30, 1994 TAG: 9408300028
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY FAMILY
SOURCE: BY DENISE WATSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
MY MOM HAS always been Miss Calm, Cool and Collected.
The ceiling could fall in around her and she'd stand among the rubble and calmly say, ``Looks like we have a little mess here, doesn't it?''
So I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her the other day as she fluttered about the kitchen. She picked up a pot. She put it down. She wiped the stove once, wiped it again, but it was already spotless. It was as if stopping would have been too much to handle.
I finally asked was was wrong, but she couldn't look at me.
``Denise,'' she said, lowering her hands slowly on the countertop, ``someone called me a nigger today.''
I went off, ``Who would dare insult my mom?! Where were they?!'' I was ready to kick off my heels and throw some serious blows.
Mom, oblivious to my anger, continued her story.
``Denise, I hadn't heard that word in years, at least not to my face,'' she said, quivering, her eyes glistening. ``And I couldn't say anything. All I could do was stand there. I was frozen. It was as if I was a small girl 30 years ago.''
Thirty years ago, my mom had to live with the word ``nigger'' and couldn't respond. But this was 1994, and she could have responded any way she wanted - but all she could do was stand there.
That one ugly word had unleashed something in my mom that she had been careful to suppress for a long, long time. Hearing it was like a veteran hearing a gunshot and being pushed back into the jungles of Vietnam, or an abused child hearing only a voice and reliving a tortured childhood.
``Nigger'' was the bullet that shot Mom back to her own abused childhood - growing up in the segregated South.
Mom had become Miss Calm, Cool and Collected from years of practice, and I had no idea what it had cost her.
I don't think many of us do.
Being born in the late '60s, I always considered myself lucky. My mom, and generations before her, had done all the dirty work. I was never beaten up for sitting down at a lunch counter. If someone called me a name, I rifled one right back.
``We've got the Civil Rights Act, integrated schools, black elected officials,'' I would often tell myself. ``There's no more racism, right?''
Over the years, I tried telling that to my mom. If she brought up something racial, I'd whine: ``Awwwwwwwww, mooooom. Things are different now.''
But we've been so ignorant of racism's lingering scars. I guess I should have known, all those times I'd tell my mom I was going out somewhere and she'd ask, instinctively, ``Oh, is that a place where black people can go?''
Persuading her to forget a past like that is like telling an abused child to forget her pain or telling the Vietnam veteran, ``You know the war wasn't all that bad.''
But veterans have their memorials, the GI bill and the Veterans Administration. Abuse victims have support groups, social services workers and tougher legislation - their pain has been validated.
But what about my mom's and others like her?
Race is still a forbidden topic, and while we can't talk about it, so much more damage is being done.
Mom stood there quivering under years of emotional baggage - baggage that had been passed on from generations before, baggage of others who had learned to be calm, cool and collected.
That's a tremendous weight to bear.
I began to quiver, too. by CNB