Loving a Racist

My father was born in 1948 in a hollow near the Missouri River. To get to the set of trailers that made up my grandparents home you had to traverse a steeply rutted dirt road that cut through the trees that surrounded the hollow. In the winter and spring snow and mud made it impassable so the family would park at the top of the road and walk down. My father dropped out of high school when he and my mother became pregnant with me, not an unusual set of circumstances in their part of the world. What got me reminiscing about my father's origins is the race issue that we are (thankfully) dealing with in a more open forum right now.

You see, my father is a racist.

In the part of America that I grew up in there are plenty of people who still think the white race is superior. I grew up with words like coon and spook readily bantered around. My father had always voted Democrat until President Obama was elected, when he decided he was no longer going to vote. We have had numerous disagreements over the years about his world view, but the reality is you can't change anyone else's mind.

I got a call from my sister this week warning me that if I talk to my dad I should know that he is “freaking out”. My nephew got his girlfriend pregnant. That's not the problem. The problem is the young woman happens to be black. When my father acts like this, it's repellent to me; when he makes racist comments I want to shrink from his DNA. I was talking with my dear friend about the issue of race and my father and she said something that had not occurred to me. She said, “Wow, your dad must really be suffering right now.” That certainly had never occurred to me, but she's right.

In a world where #BlackLivesMatter, where there's a black president in office, where women are in positions of power, through my dads lens it must look like the world has gone topsy turvy.

My father's wrong thinking is creating his suffering and as a follower of the Buddha I must find compassion for his suffering. I will continue to disagree with his beliefs but hopefully I will find myself shrinking away from his DNA less.