No one can choose the color of their skin, their ancestral heritage, or the cultural/ethnic climate in which they are reared. Being genetically predisposed to certain physical characteristics is no guarantee of success or failure, either.
For years I have shunned others' label that I'm "White." I don't even like the term "Caucasian." Nor would I accept designations of "Asian," "Hispanic," or even "Chartreuse" if any of those were personally relevant.
I was born and spent half of my life in the shadow of the U.S. capital. In the mid '70s when I was in junior high and my sister was just starting elementary school our mother, then legally separated, met and fell in love with a mystery man. For years Mom's sweetheart was known to us girls only as "Mr. X." Knowing the happiness he brought into her life, and subsequently my sister's and mine, we didn't initially question their secrecy.
Time passed as Mom and Mr. X's relationship deepened. By this time the late '70s were upon us and I had begun high school. My sister still went to the same demographically diverse elementary school I had attended years prior. Our family maintained the same middle-class suburban home in which I'd lived since I was a toddler. It was then that my sister and I were finally introduced to Mr. X.
Neither my sister nor I were phased upon the revelation that Mr. X was African-American. We had already loved and respected this man whom we only knew vicariously. From that point of introduction Mr. X was henceforth adopted by my sister and I, reborn as "Chocolate Pop." The four of us, Mom, C.P., my sister and I, could not have been happier. But all was not well in our slice of suburbia.
To this day I still can't speculate the identity of the sad individual who was compelled to repeatedly leave grotesque, venom-filled hate propaganda (KKK) on my family's doorstep. I lost count of the number of times I raced home from school to dispose of these cowardly droppings lest they be discovered by my sister. It wasn't until many years later that she, Mom and I compared experiences on such matters. C.P. wasn't yet even living in our home when these things occurred. The hateful actions of anonymous cowards were utterly baffling and disturbing on so many levels.
Mom confided that more than once she and C.P. were refused service at restaurants throughout the Capitol Beltway area. At school I was regularly cornered in the girl's locker room by groups of both Whites and Blacks who baited me with racial epithets. Their favorite was "wigger." Their assaults escalated from petty name calling to attempts at tripping me, strategically timed flying locker doors, and rat-tail towel attacks to gauntlet-style episodes of sucker punching. This is when I learned to fight- and fight well. I put an end to the attacks of my personal terrorists which school administration flatly refused to acknowledge.
To be continued @ Part Two...
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