Marykay Morelli: Monroe St. incident reinforces need to speak out against racism
At what age does a child of color first feel the sting of racism?
My biracial son started second grade the year we moved to Madison. Shortly after our arrival, he accompanied his father to Hilldale to run some errands. My little boy tired quickly, so he sat on a bench swinging his short legs while his dad shopped nearby. An elderly white woman asked my well-dressed, well-groomed, middle class 8-year-old if he was homeless. Confused, he pointed to his dad and said no. Returning home he cried, "The lady made me feel dirty."
That winter, his fifth-grade brother walked home from Van Hise Elementary School to find a swastika stamped into the snow on the terraced lawn of our Hill Farms home. Looking over his shoulder, afraid, he quickly destroyed the detestable symbol.
In the ensuing 15 years, untold racist acts have been perpetrated against my sons and their friends, too numerous to catalog -- from name calling to white women clutching their purses as they passed on the street, to aggressive surveillance while shopping, to police stops. These routine humiliations leave no telltale marks of the devastating damage they wreak; yet they cause a slow interior death from a thousand invisible cuts.
Last month, I received a midnight call from my younger son, now 23. Reaching me in D.C. on a business trip, he was surprised to hear my sleepy voice, forgetful of the time difference. He told me that his day had started out well when he and his buddies stopped to aid a stranded motorist. Feeling magnanimous, they returned to the Monroe Street apartment he shares with his brother to watch a movie.
Later that evening, they walked outside and were stunned to find the letters KKK scrawled in black magic marker on the apartment entrance as well as the car. With a swift, visceral punch, it evoked the brutality of those murderous nightriders -- cowards who terrorized innocent people under cover of black skies and white sheets.
The police were called, photos were taken, a report was filed. But at end of the day, nothing could be done. "It is what it is," my young adult son told me resignedly. Yet across the miles, this white mother clearly heard the bewilderment and pain behind his weary words. And recalled the time long ago when his plaintive voice wailed, "The lady made me feel dirty."
Seething with maternal fury, I grabbed the only weapon I own -- the written word -- to defend my children and document my outrage over this heinous deed carried out by contemporary night writers. And to ask the good people of Madison to be aware, to be equally affronted, and to speak out against racism in all its virulent forms.
Marykay Morelli lives in Longview, Wash.
