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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (71932)	6/13/2008 12:02:23 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541990

It's their age. My mom was super liberal. Our family went to a black church when MLK was killed. My mother was a staunch supporter of the NAACP and gave to the United Negro college fund. But when I started dating a black man, I thought she would die. That really bothered her. And when we broke up she was SO happy. That was a weird side of her, for me- but I think she was a product of her times, just as people who hate gays (or are made uncomfortable by them) are. Nowadays it's rare to find someone like that, prejudiced against mixed marriages, liberal or conservative, and mixed marriages are all over, and unremarkable. You can't blame people for being old and the product of their time. You can commend the ones who aren't, but I don't think you can blame the others. Which is not to say it isn't a bigoted way to be- but if you love someone, and they are old, you know you aren't going to change them, so you just ignore it.

To: Katelew who wrote (71932)	6/13/2008 12:59:17 AM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541990

It's a funny thing. My mom was the same way. My parents broke the barriers when I was in high school, and I never even knew it. They took me and my friend, a black singer, to DC for the state Bland Music COntest (she was a vocalist, I am pianist and I also accompanied her)- must have been 64-65. We all shared a room, and it wasn't til years later I found out that my parents had been rather coerced into it by the school, and acted without "community approval". (And that my mother almost died when my friend put baby oil on her hair.) But to their credit, those wonderful people never ever let on that this was tough for them, that they caused waves in our small town. I am sort of sad that I was part of the civil rights movement and never even knew it! It was a different kind of generosity, I think, Kate. We had a maid who loved to read, and my parents let her take whatever she liked from our shelves. (this woman raised a bunch of kids, all of whom went to college, and she herself went on to be an executive secretary at W&L.). My parents thought the world of her, and spoke very highly of her intelligence and drive, but she never would have been at out home for social reasons. OUr moms may have gone as far as was possible within the confines of their world. They truly weren't prejudiced as much as they were restricted by the social structure of the times.