my mother, my country
by nikki meredith
I had my teeth cleaned last week and while my mouth was rendered unusable by me, the dental hygienist started talking about her husband. He works for a Bay Area police department and had just returned from some kind of law enforcement conference in Florida. At one point her conversation veered to the political and I held my breath or as much as I could hold my breath with someone’s hands in my mouth. I braced myself for a right wing rant. But that’s not what happened. She said when her husband returned home from his trip, he walked in the door and flopped down the living room couch. He looked at her and said, “I don’t recognize this country any more.”
While he was in Florida he saw campaign signs – apparently many of them – that freely, openly and unapologetically, used the n word in their anger-relled declarations.
“Can you imagine,” she said to me, “what it must be like for African- Americans to drive around and see those signs?” Read the rest of this entry »
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