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Despite these signs of acceptance, intolerance persists. Some Blacks and Whites report that they have been mysteriously fired after employers discovered their marital status. And an interracial couple, according to the Center for Democratic Renewal, ned only go two miles outside Atlanta to be the victim of attack. Elmo Seay and his White wife, Susan, for example, fled from a suburban Atlanta subdivision after their home was vandalized and firebombed. Another interracial couple, Susan Hill, 29, and her Black husband, John, 36, got so frustrated with the ostracism and rejection by friends, family, landlords and employers that they left Bolivar, Tenn., temporarily and settled in Jackson, Tenn., until the commotion died down. “It was like I had committed a crime,” Susan Hill says. “Being from a small town, it just seems it is born and bred in some people that you don’t like Blacks, no matter what.”
Dear..
Dear Regina,
There are not words to describe how deeply I’ve wounded you. I laughed and smiled at you in your worst moment of public humiliation. I let the pressures of my friends and our school influence me into becoming something we both know I am not. Please meet me after school at The End. It is the one place, the one spot where we have always been able to escape. I’m bringing you the think we talked about. Lets leave this place, at least for a little while. Meet me at the place where we watch as the world goes gray.
-Love,
Michael
Another Lunch
Another day, another lunch. I walk through those all-too-familiar steel double doors and take my place in the lunch line. The usual smells of bleach and stale food my nostrils. The large white lunch lady hands me my tray without a saying a word. I take my generic black plastic tray and head toward the back of the cafeteria. As I walk past the rows of laughing and happy children my eyes search for the one person I long to see each day. I spot him out at one of the tables of junior-class boys. I walk up, not quite knowing what to expect. I know we have to keep it quiet, I know we won’t hug or even waive, but perhaps a word, just one word can get through this divide. I walk up to him, smile, and open my mouth to speak. Before a single sound can emerge from the depths of my soul I met with a barrage of comments
“You’re master ain’t here girl.”
“You lost? The fields out back.”
“Hey bitch, go fetch me another tray, I’m awfully hungry.”
Each successive comment is met with audible laughter. Those were only the ones I heard, although I’m sure that there were more. I stood frozen, eyes level with Michaels, not knowing what to do. Should I say something? Go? Cry? Run? How could Michael allow this? why didn’t he stop it? i stood and watched until Michael himself, trying to fit in cracked a smile. It’s at that point that the cold began to envelope me and I became alone. Sure he’d apologize and I would take him back, but things were altered forever. I had strayed from the rules, from the confines of color and tried to find my world of Grey. Now I am left, even with Michael, together, alone.
Lines
“I love you, not only for what you are, But for what I am when I am with you.”
–Roy Croft
My Second Mother
My upbringing was in no way,shape,or form conventional. Born to white middle-class aprents who were forced to work in order to free themselves from debt, I was raised by a woman named Judith Mohammed until I reached the age of ten. My parents were still involved, still saw me on weekly occasions, but the woman who deserves most of the credit is Judith, who I call GiGi. GiGi is from Trinidad and Tobago and entered into a conservative white household. Although my father will never admit it, he owes his family’s success to GiGi. Without her there isn’t a family. I have her to thank as well, without her, and one other woman in my life, I would have likely adopted my father’s (what he calls a ”traditionally southern”) view of things. This is the woman who has been there to witness my first steps, my first words, and my first day of school. She is my mother and I love her. What does that make me?
