Prejudice Revisited

I think I have a lot to say on the subject of prejudice. I've witnessed some unbelievable stuff, been the victim more than once, and the only explanation I have ever been able to come up with is ignorance, just total absolute ignorance.

In my last post I mentioned I was married to a black man. We were married 15 years and had two children. As with most marriages, there were ups and downs, it was mostly a roller coaster ride actually, but I don't think the problems had anything to do with race.

Having grown up a little bit, then more and more, overweight, I know all too well how mean folks can be. It's always been so funny to me that people will assume I am an idiot, I mean who would let their weight get this out of control if they weren't, so when I find myself dealing with someone who thinks I'm stupid, I like to just shovel out all the rope they want. Before long, they've hung themselves because they assumed they knew something they didn't.

Then, when the little fat girl married a black man - oh my - you can imagine what was said. He was the only one I could get, black guys like fat girls, yada yada yada. I don't remember any of this ever coming out of the mouth of anything but a white man.

The uglist episode I think we ever encounted was one day, taking the kids to get pictures made. We had them all dressed and dolled up - and we weren't being slouchy ourselves. As we got out of the car and got them out of their carseats - there was a man, a woman, and three or four little kids coming out of Kmart. He had long hair, tattoos, she had dirty stringy hair, all of the kids were in some state of undress and none of them had on shoes. They didn't look like anyone had had a bath lately either. So Ronnie and I have our little spit polished jewels we're walking into the store and this man stops in the middle of the road and proceeds to tell his wife and kids what a damn shame we were. Then they go on their little hoopy car, put all the kids in the backseat with no carseats, and drive off. It was just surreal - it made no sense at all. Still doesn't.

And my mom's take on the marriage thing was "it could be worse - you could have married any one of those white boys you brought home".