Controversy

Blanco

Blanco. Copyright © 2014 by Jasmine Tabor. All Rights Reserved.

Dedicated to those who tried to solve America's racism early on and to my grandfather who had to walk miles to school in the snow.

Blanco transitive verb \ˈblaŋ(ˌ)kō\ Spanish for white or blank.

1. Father

My grandfather fought in the civil war and reminded my siblings and I of that fact often. How he fought for his rights so his children and his grandchildren didn't have to see niggers everywhere they went. "For some reason," he would go on, "I did that for people I didn't even know. But I'm glad I did." And he'd wink at me.

Most times, I just nodded it off, not caring much, but other times, I reminded him that my father fought in World War I and I still had to stare at the back of the heads of German students all the time. And America had apparently won that fight but still didn't bring my father back home.

When I say this, my grandfather simply gets quiet, realizing that my mother is standing in the kitchen, looking at me intensely.

She's heard me say those things to my grandfather yet she still can't get over how blunt I seemingly am. My mother told me to stop talking like that.

When dad didn't come home in the November of 1918, I was twelve and numb. My family had already received the letter of how he was lost at sea and most likely dead but I still had hope that the Navy may not have realized my father was strong and willing to get home no matter what.

But everyone else's fathers were returning home. All for the exception of mine.

2. Mother

Mother was the most affected by the death of her husband. It was still affecting her as she got up in the morning, made tea for herself and went off to work.

I know she thought about it often and repeatedly throughout the day. Sometimes, I'd even see her reach out for something. Maybe him. But the strange thing is, nothing was ever there for her to touch and reach for.

3. Movies

I remember when my dad found out about the War. He sat at the kitchen table, reading that newspaper and grandfather pointed it out on the front of the paper "THE LUSITANIA SUNK". Grandfather was outraged but dad just shrugged it off and said these things happened.

I was frightened of the Germans. How could they do that to America? I announced this to my dad and he told me to go to my bedroom, get dressed, we're going out.

He took me to the movie theater, a treat we could rightly afford back then because dad was a businessman. We saw a new movie, something he said would teach me about the white culture. The Birth of a Nation it was called about some men who wore white sheets and killed people they didn't like all that much.

The movie was boring but my father took me out for ice cream sundaes and sandwiches afterwards and summarized the whole movie for me in a single sentence: "Your grandfather doesn't like Negros and thought the movie would be good for you."

4. Nickname

After father was announced dead and gone, my mother had to look for a job. She evidently was told to work at a restaurant.. Everyday, I would walk to see my mother after school and watch her work in the kitchen. As I walked to my mother's work, I passed the negro high school and I was mystified by the dark skin and hair and styles and the startling discovery that they went to my mother's diner to eat and hang out like students did.

As I got older, I began to realize that they watched me when I walked there to my mother and I heard them refer to me as 'Blanco.' I found it baffling, their term for me but as I grew and I was about to get a proper bicycle, I began to find it touching that they'd go to such lengths to find such a demeaning name for the white kid who walked to his mother's cafe everyday he could.