My Grandfather’s Response to a Racial Slur Shaped my World
Southern white men who hated racism have been ignored by history
I was five or six years old. My mother and I were at her father’s house for a visit, which we did often. I don’t remember the context or why, but I said the N-word. My grandfather was a mild-mannered man who was generally kind. But at that moment, I saw his face get bright red and a look of anger on his face was something I had not seen before.
He quickly grabbed my arm, squeezing it hard, and spanked me with his hand awfully hard for what seemed like a long time.
He then grabbed me and pointed his finger in my face.
“Don’t you ever say that word again,” he said with his anger not yet receding.
He paced around the room for a moment and then told my mom to take me home. He basically kicked us out, though it was just for that day. He got over his anger at me and never mentioned it again. But I knew there was a hard boundary that I had better not cross.
My mother, who normally was very loving towards me, seemed to approve of my punishment and was not sympathetic to my plight at all. She was clearly upset — later I realized it was an embarrassment — with me as well.
On the way home, she asked me if I knew what that word meant. I told her I did not. She told me it was an awfully bad word and that I would be punished even worse if I said it again.
“Let this be a lesson to not say words when you don’t know what they mean,” she said.
“Let this be a lesson to not say words when you don’t know what they mean,” she said.
I wondered if I might get punished again when we got home. I was already in pain, confused, and crying. She did not punish me again when we got home, and she did not speak of it again for a long time. The message was clear. I had done a bad thing by saying an unbelievably bad word and she felt my punishment was justified.
My early racial education
This was southern Appalachia in the early 1960s. To that point, I do not even know if I knew there were black people. It was a few years before I saw a black person and there were none in my school. It was a few years after the incident before I knew what the N-word meant.
The punishment I received that day certainly made a big impression, but as I grew up, I came to see it as they saw it. To this day I cannot stand that word. Like my grandfather, I will not tolerate it being used in my hearing. It is demeaning and stupid. I am also hesitant to say words unless I am certain of the meaning.
He was consistent in his opposition to racist type language. Many times I saw him get into arguments. Once I saw him chase people off his property during a family gathering. It was not enough to simply be offended or to not like certain kinds of talk. He felt he had to take action.
A different kind of southern man
There were some white men in southern Appalachia who felt the same way my grandfather did. They did not just disagree with racism, they hated it with passion. They would not tolerate filthy racist language or any action against a minority person. They would speak up and get in people’s face about using racist language, or about belittling people of color.
They did not just disagree with racism, they hated it with passion.
There were very few black people in the area where we lived and very few other people of color. This made them an easy target for people to take shots toward.
But there were some men who had grown up on the other side of the street. They had grown up in poverty alongside black people, Indians, and Hispanics. There were no safety nets in those days, and you could literally starve to death. It has to do with not forgetting where you came from, and they never did.
They all had their own story and their own reasons for their strong feelings on the matter. It’s hard to get the story out of mountain men in Appalachia. It took me years to get the whole story on my grandfather. I will be telling it soon.
Two more parts to this story
Here is another story about racism.
James Jordan is a writer now living in the Midwest. Here is a website with stories about the psychology and emotion of writing.