Around 1987, in the box of some dead relative, I found a photo from a blackface minstrel show in the 1930s. I showed it to my grandma because I didn’t understand what it was. She said, “That’s awful. Those are white men who thought it was funny to pretend to be Black men.“ (1/4)

She said, “People don’t do that anymore. It is wrong.” (OK clearly people continued to do that, and I think my grandma knew that, but let’s remember she was trying to teach a six-year-old white kid to act right.) So I asked, “But why did they do that back then?” (2/4)

(She was born in 1925, for context.) And she DIDN’T say, “Well, it was just another time, the olden days.” I appreciate that now, that she didn’t say that. Instead, what she said was...(3/4)

...”BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE AWFUL.”

I’d like to tell you that she gave me a nuanced lesson on diversity that day, but mostly I think my grandma was just angry all the goddamn time at bullies and injustice. She worked in HR at a NJ trucking company & she always hated Trump. (4/4)

I should add that her husband flew bombing raids over Occupied Europe escorted by the Tuskegee Airmen. He returned from war an avid anti-segregationist, pro-veteran and anti-military. However, I think she had an inborn deep moral opposition to injustice and unfairness.

My grandma never got to go to college. She was born in 1925 and because of her I never bought it when people would say “well older racist white people are just from another time” because she didn’t buy that shit either. She wasn’t an activist, she just did good things quietly.