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.
