I woke this morning with Dixie, the anthem of the defiant old south playing in my head.
We moved to Charlotte, NC from NY when I was 5. I came home from school one day and asked my mother, “Are we Yankees?”
I spent the next 7 years determined to erase that legacy that made me an object of ridicule among my friends. I developed such a deep drawl that, when we went to Fire Island, NY for summer, my grandfather would bring me into his cocktail parties so his Yankee friends could make sport of my accent. My wife says she hears it emerge when I’m among souther accents.
It was long enough for me to absorb the powerful ethos of the defiant, defeated south.
Today’s wakeup refrain was just one of countless reminders that the assumptions of racial division remain imbedded in my bones.
I’m grateful that my children, while not free of prejudice (no American can be), find it puzzling when I tell them that it is a (welcome) surprise when I meet a person of color as a peer. Something in me still sees black people as “other.” That, despite an exhilarating sabbatical in Zimbabwe in 1984 which I hoped might have erased what I find shameful and limiting.
Though it’s dangerous to generalize from one’s own experience, when I read that racism is written into our national story, I find only a smattering of self-forgiveness in knowing my lack of maturity, failing to transcend my legacy, is widespread.
I dream of living in a world in which grace and forgiveness trump fear and prejudice. Where Dixie, that lyrical reminder of the sins we inherited from our fathers, can play in my head without remorse.