My White Supremacist Mom Part Five

I used to think that the bigoted things Mom and Aunts said were just madness or ignorance, but I think the truth is worse! Their racist talking points are part of a centuries long tradition, an organized movement meant to undermine our nation and terrorize people of color. Do they know that? (The audiobook for Bring the War Home is really good! I got it on Libro.fm) 

The conversation, or whatever it was, turned to The Uprising, when she’d used all her comment time to defend herself from I-don’t-know-what and blaming me for taking part in what she saw as only riots. (“I taught you to believe in peace,” she said. “You should know better.” No justice etc.)

 

Sweetie, who Mom once let slip was her favorite, told a story about her own family, and for a few sentences’ worth of time, the mask of contempt left Mom’s face. Sweetie said something like:

 

“My parents and I don’t agree on things. They’re conservative. They’re from Texas. But a few years ago, when I got hurt and needed help, my dad dropped everything and came. Nothing else mattered!”

 

Mom left her guard down another moment and allowed that she should have checked on us during the fires, etc.

 

“I just assumed you were okay!”

 

“I was NOT okay!” I sobbed, and her faced twisted with condescension again.

 

“Oh, you mean emotionally.” In an eyeroll of a voice.

 

I guess to give her an idea of what we’d been through, I told her about the time (During the “Wall of Moms” era across the country in Portland) that Sweetie and I joined a handful of other protesters standing in front of police cars to keep them from getting too close to a students-and-teachers protest against police in our city schools. This was a fairly standard bit of privilege-leveraging, but I was proud of us! Mom’s disgust made it clear to me that she thought I should have been mowed down. This whole conversation was about how thoroughly murderable she thought I was. Being rooted so deeply in her own fear made her bloodthirsty.

 

Navigating bloodlust is part of the terror of having Trump relatives, but it didn’t feel entirely new. She could call me a “baby killer” for being pro-choice, but any threat to her own grown-up baby was just fine.

 

“Oh, they have police in schools? How many kids have they killed?”

 

As with COVID-19, she demanded a body count before acknowledging any suffering, though of course she was ready to discount any body count given. She was conversational quicksand.

 

The breaking point came during her litany of the terrible things she imagined the Left had in store for the country.

“Reparations would be HORRIBLE!”

(Of all the things?!)

When I asked her why, she said it was because it was really European immigrants who built the country’s wealth and because slavery was exaggerated in the lying and corrupt public schools.

Sweetie, who has WAY more tolerance for futile discussion, cut Mom off there.

 

“Just…don’t. Just stop.”