Don't Pick at that Bigot

Earlier this week I inadvertently placed myself in a position to be at the receiving end of hate speech. I was perusing one of the social utility pages that I frequent when I came across an Anti Semitic anthem posted by an acquaintance. I did not give it too much thought, called him on it with a mild response, and then signed off the computer.

Within an hour my mailbox was filled with more than fifty outraged emails from friends and acquaintances around the world and as the day wore on I apologized and apologized. I assured my co workers and clients and employers and friends that my home town acquaintance had no idea how culturally insensitive his post might be to others. I sent a private message to the poster and asked nicely if I could get a "heads up" the next time something so inflammatory would be posted. It had not mattered that I had responded to the hate anthem at all as shared "friends" had accessed the page hours before I had responded.

My first instinct was to defend the hater. This was, after all, a decent human who had made a terrible mistake. I assured the offended and the offendee. No big deal I droned on. Its all just such big mistake. It was not a mistake though and as I assuaged and mollified the hater began a public assault on my character. Distracted by the apologies I never thought to check back in to see what was happening to me. Within a few hours the character assaults leveled against me had destroyed my credibility as apologist. As I defended the hater, he eviscerated me. Emails continued to pour in. I defended the hater and he escalated his hate now directed toward me.

It is not often that I remember that my surname is ethnic. Yes, I was married for two decades and I know full well my ex husbands ethnicity but it never does occur to me that I am ethnic by marriage. Thinking back it concerned me a great deal in the days before I married.

My first time home, with the husband to be, to meet my loud and boisterous southern Italian family, was a test of sorts. My mother was making sure that no gaffe would occur that would embarrass me or the husband to be. The wild card in this arrangement would be my grandmother. My Nonnie was a gracious and kind woman who would wind up loving my husband as if he were her own grandson, but she was also a woman with a six grade education, poor social skills and prejudice toward anything that was not within her familiar sphere. I worried a lot about what my grandmother would say when she met my Bob and I know my mother worried as well. I should not have been very surprised then, when after keeping him away from my family for as long as I could, the day came when Bob went home to Waterbury with me.

After a good round of socially appropriate introductions from my college educated cousins, siblings and aunts and uncles, my grandmother took center stage. She was dressed as she always did with her housedress, an apron and shoelace head band tying her hair back. She had taken the time to wear her dentures and she was clearly on her best behavior. "Bub" she addressed my Bob, "Bub, I am Nonnie". Her hands were clenched tightly to her waist and she was trembling but loud. "I have something to say Bub" she continued, "I have one son in law he is a Epsicopalian and another son in law, he is a Irish". "Its okay with me". She went on to tell my fiance the nationality and religion of each of her granchildren in law. She was determined to let him know she was not going to hold a little thing like religion get between the two of them.

I shot a look at my mother who was staring at her sister, my Aunt Cathy, and the two of them were rubbing their foreheads and muttering silent prayers that whatever Sardinian gods were standing by would rush forth with salvation and end the introductions. I slipped back behind Bob ready to grab his hand and pull him back out the door if need be. I felt my heart race and my palms grow moist.

I knew racism as a child. My mother's family were Italian immigrants and my mother still suffered, well into adulthood, night terrors from the times the FBI would break into her home and search for short wave radios. She was a teenager when the raids ended but she kept within her a childhood of trauma. For all of her adult life she would, from time to time, awaken screaming. The FBI coming after the Italians was a familiar theme in my young life, except Italian was a nice word for what they called my mother and her family.

When I was ten, my mother, then divorced, hired a local house painter to renew the exterior of our tiny Cape Cod home. By then Mom had become a civil rights activist and staunch supporter of Dr. King. She had decided she would hire the best painter for the best price and that painter happened to be Carl. Carl was an african american man she met at St. Francis Hospital where she worked as a supervising registered nurse. The hospital plant supervisor had given Mom Carl's name along with a sterling reference. He was hired and before we knew it was astride his ladder painting our dingy red cape cod a vibrant registered nurses white.

Carl had been on the job for less than a day when the neighbors let their feelings be known. My mom was serving dinner to my sister and me when one of the neighbors called her name through the screen door in our kitchen. My mother, the only registered nurse in the neighborhood, was accustomed to jumping up during dinner, the middle of the night, blinding snow storms and whenever else the neighbors called. She could be counted on to sprint through yards to triage the sick and wounded of our neighborhood and recommend the best course of action. She grabbed her first aid kit and ran out the back door admonishing me to watch my sister. We, my sister and I, knew the drill.

Maureen and I began our usual sibling prattle until suddenly the screen door flew open. My mother, having spent only a moment or two on our back steps was now back in the kitchen gasping and trembling. She dropped her medical bag on the floor, slammed the kitchen door shut and sat down. With both her hands covering her mouth, she let loose with a cry and tears welled up in her eyes. Maureen and I sat stunned, unaware of what had just transpired our backyard. A moment or two more of sustained and stunned silence passed before a gentle knock came at the back door. Carl slowly opened the door and appeared on the threshold while my mother, recovering as quickly as she could began stabbing at the food on her plate.

"Mrs. Chagnon", Carl began, "I think I should finish up here and perhaps tomorrow send you another one of the painters from the painting pool". My mother did not look up at all but simply said, "No Carl. That will not be necessary at all. You are doing a fine job and I will expect you again tomorrow morning".

The back door closed and Maureen and I watched our mother carefully. She continued to cry and tremble while she mumbled the words of prayers she knew well from a lifetime of devout Catholicism. Soon, Maureen and I stood up and began clearing the dinner table around her. My sister grabbed my mothers tin ashtray and ever present Marlboro pack from their usual place in the den and gently pet my mother's hair. "It's Okay Mommy", she said, "Cathy and I are going to be good". My mother nodded but said nothing. We passed her Kleenex and stood beside her. She cried that way for hours, alone in her kitchen, while her daughters kept close vigil on the steps of our front hall.

When bedtime came and went, Maureen and I crawled up to our bedroom and tucked each other in. Just before dawn the next morning we heard the car motor of our ancient babysitter, Mae. Creeping to the hallway we listened as my mother instructed Mae that "the girls should play in their own backyard today. Do not permit them out of the yard". With that, my mother, as she had done for years and would do for many years more walked briskly down our front walk to her car. She stood there in the early light of day in her crisply pressed nurses uniform. Her starched cap was neatly pinned to her hair. Every hair in place, impeccably groomed and dressed she opened her car door and then paused to look up at my sister and my bedroom window. For a moment we thought she had seen us, but in fact she was busy blowing us a good morning kiss before tooling off down Portman Street. She never offered us an explanation for that event again and to be sure we did not dare ask her.

Two years later, when her much admired Dr.Martin Luther King Jr was gunned down in a southern town she cried again. The day after Dr. King was slain she dressed us in our Sunday best and took us into midtown Hartford where we visited the travel agent. My mother, worn down from the civil rights wars of the 60s booked a three month trip for her daughters and she to Hawaii. Spent, grieving and discouraged, she moved forward with her best plan. After our booking she took Maureen and me to the Honis Oyster House where we met her best friend Eleanor for a ladies lunch. All of us in our white gloves and prim purses and hats were waiting for our chowders to arrive when my mother began to cry again. "I want to understand," she wept. "I want to understand, I do, but I can't". My "aunt" Eleanor stroked her hand and soothed her as best she could. I do not think that my mother ever did understand bigotry and I am very sure she passed that on to me.

She never did give me any lectures or warnings or admonitions, there were simply the images of my mother, devastated by bigotry that shaped my life and that of my sisters. She led by example and she did it in such a way that she made sure if attacked for our beliefs we would never demean, abuse or hate another human. She did good.

I was overwhelmingly supported by my friends and aquaintances in the face of hate. I find it hard to accept compliments about my restraint in the face of such abuse and yet I did it. I did not have a choice I suspect because my younger sister still lives and would not understand anything less than what my mother put forth.

"It would not be difficult for anyone to understand how it is you came to be the empathic humanitarian you are" wrote the most important person who stood in that family kitchen with me more than 25 years ago. "You are everything you worked for and then some. A legacy of understanding and love is complete".

Blinking back tears, I remember what happened next. My Nonnie took the hand of my fiance and she held it in front of her. "This" she said, as she moved his hand in a circle before her, is the Mediterannean Sea." She then took her hands to her heart and said, "Italy" and then she took his hands and pressed them to his heart and she said, "Israel". It will be okay because we share the same sea.

Personal thanks for dear friends Alynne, Judy, Ying leeSon and of course my Asian family from Tawain. When the hate ends I shall meet you at the end of the path and until then your hope sustains me. Namaste.