It's All About Choice!

I first started thinking that a lot of the things I had learned in my life could be wrong the day my sister brought home a black boyfriend. Until that day, I had No Idea that my Mom was a racist. I remember in kindergarten, the librarian at my school was a black lady named Mrs. Williams, and she was a friend of my Moms. I remember going shopping and having lunch with this lady and my Mom on many occasions. I remember loving every book Mrs. Williams ever gave me to read. So the day my sister brought home a black boyfriend, the words that came out of my Moms mouth was a complete and utter shock to me. One thing that I cannot stand is racism, to me it is nothing but pure ignorance, and here I am finding out that my own Mom is one of the “ignorant”. It almost changed the way I thought about my Mom, not the way I felt, nothing I learned could make me love my Mom less, but it definitely almost changed the way I thought about her…until she explained. She told us that she would never apologize for being a racist, that she had learned it from her mother. There was nobody in this world that my Mom respected more than her Mother, my Grandmother, who died when I was five. My Mom held on to every memory and lesson that she learned from her Mom tightly, like holding on to roller coaster handle-bars. Some of these lessons happened to be racist. What my Mom told me next has stuck in my head, and I would never pry it out. She went on to explain that although she would never be remorseful for her racist feelings, something inside her told her it would be wrong if she passed these thoughts on to her children, so she made a conscious decision Not To! This is one of the biggest decisions ever made for me in my life, for I am so far from being a racist that I no longer believe in race, but that’s another discussion. My Mom realized that something that had been taught to her as a child, by the person she most respected, was wrong, and although she chooses not to change her feelings, she chose to end it by not passing it on to her children! My Mom explains to me that she is the way she is because she learned it from her Mom, and I always got the feeling that it was a way in which she could still connect with her. One day I pressed my Mom by telling her that her Mom had passed away some time ago, and that if she was racist, it was now her choice to be so. She one day made a choice not to pass racism on to her children, and she also chooses to keep those thoughts in her head. It’s all a choice. She chose to follow her Moms ways, she chose to accept the realization that it was wrong, and she then chose not to pass it on. What could I have learned that may be wrong and what are the other possibilities? The possibilities open up as soon as we choose to see them. That’s why it is imperative for us to Question All That Is Questionable! It’s All About Choice!