Stains

I grew up in a very stereo-typical southern household. My father was the fat man in a stained wife beater and a scruffy face. His hands were almost always black due to grease from working on semi-trucks for a living. When he wasn't working, he was either sleeping or fixated in front of the TV with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other.  My mother was the woman with the messy hair up in a pony tail, wearing a tank top and shorts that were both one size too small for her. A cigarette dangled from her red stained lips through out her daily activities, which included watching TV, cooking dinner, talking on the phone, and (very rarely) cleaning the house.

Their stereo-typical ways were not just limited to looks, unfortunately. They both spoke in screams and southern slang under a thick, country accent. At least once a week, my mom would end up throwing objects at my dad while my dad called her a crazy bitch, among other things. At the end of the day, they would make up and be lovey dovey, and all would be forgotten. It became such a normal thing in my family, that I thought most families did this for the longest time. I never questioned it and I only became worried if it took longer than a day for them to make up.

While these things didn't have any permanent lasting damage (at least, none as far as I can tell), some of the things they said have stuck with me and I fear it will never go away despite my extreme desire for it to. You see, and this should come to no surprise to anyone with the background information I just gave, my mom and  dad were extremely racist and homophobic. From the time I could understand them, until now, as an adult, they always told me how black, Hispanic, Jewish, and gay people were the scum of the Earth and the reason for all our problems. This was a near every day thing for me; see a black person? They're a nigger and lazy good-for-nothings that need to be sent back to Africa. See a Hispanic? They're here illegally, taking all our jobs and refusing to speak English. See a Jewish person (Or in most cases, it was just anyone with a big nose or someone who was well off)? Hitler had the right idea, they're greedy fucks who can't be trusted to guard a penny. See a gay person? They're going to Hell, and they're the main reason America is going down the shitter. They're ruining families and they're perverted, most are pedophiles.


As a young impressionable child,  I never questioned this logic. They were my parents, after all, they knew everything! By the time I was 5, I already had a deep hate for most ethnic groups and homosexuals. How dare they ruin my country! Why don't they just go back where they come from? Why can't the homosexuals just stop defying God?  My parents had embedded this hate so deep within me, that just seeing these groups of people would make me think up racist remarks and feel rage. 

One day, when I was probably around 7 or 8 years old, my next door neighbor, Mary, came over to babysit me. She was probably 14 or 15, and I had a major crush on her. Blond hair, blue eyes, tan skin and legs that went on for miles (at least to my young mind), she was like every 'girl next door' type you see in movies. I, being the charming young man that I was, set to impress her by watching Cops. I don't know why I thought this would impress her, but it made perfect sense to me at the time, I swear.

Everything was going fine, until a scene with a black man getting wrestled to the ground by a white cop came on the TV screen. I became excited and practically jumped for joy seeing it, and then I yelled "Oh yeah, get that dumb nigger!" I looked to my right, expecting Mary to agree with me. Instead, she looked horrified and said "Don't EVER say the N word. Not EVER." 

I was surprised. Why was she taking up for them? Surely she knew black people were bad people? So, I curiously  ask her. "Why can't I say nigger? That's what they are, mommy and daddy said so," Mary, again, looked horrified. "Do you know what that word means?" She asked.

I thought about it, and to my surprise, I didn't really know what it meant. I just knew it's what black people were called. Mary calmly asked me, "What would you do if I said you were stupid, worthless, and couldn't do anything right?" She didn't give me time to answer before she asked another question. "How would you feel if I said you didn't deserve to play in the park or eat ice cream because your skin is white? You wouldn't like hearing those things, would you?"

I thought for a moment. "No,"

She nodded. "Well, that's what the N word means. Every time you call a black person the N word, you're calling them stupid, worthless, and that they don't get to do the things you can because their skin color is darker than yours."

I was so confused, and I could hardly process what Mary was telling me. My mommy and daddy had always told me black people were bad people, and I never thought to ask why exactly that was, I just accepted anything my parents said as fact like so many other children do. 

She continued, clearly noticing how confused I was. "If  I were to go to the beach and my skin became the color of that black man on TV, would you think I was a bad person?"

"No,"

"Then why do you think black people are bad? They are the same as you and me, their skin is just a different color. Doesn't it seem silly to hate a person over a color?"

I thought about for a while. "I don't know," I finally said.

That was pretty much the end of the conversation that day, and while it didn't change me over night, it did plant a seed that eventually came to fruition years later. By the time I was in High School, I realized my parents were bigots and that my hate for these groups of people were completely unjustifiable and disgusting. I stopped saying the N and F word, and I completely changed my thought process about race and sexual orientations. 

Sadly, it seems that I will never be able to completely wash away the stains of hate my parents left in my mind. I have noticed that, even years later, I still sometimes have these disgusting thoughts, and it makes me so angry, and so sad. If I'm dealing with a black, Hispanic, Jewish or gay person and they're being nice to me, I have no problems with them. However, if they upset me, my knee-jerk reaction is to immediately think "God, it's because they're a stupid nigger/spic/Jew/faggot". I don't think, "God, this person is being a dick because they're just a bad person," I think they're being a dick due to their race or sexuality.

Of course, once I notice myself doing this, I always push that thought away and tell myself that I'm being unfair and disgusting. But it still doesn't change the fact that I had the damn thought in the first place, and it's all because my parents had drilled into me that these people were bad. 

I believe that children from birth to around age five are much like buckets. What you put in these buckets will shape how they will ultimately become as people for the rest of their lives. Fill it with mostly hateful things and that's what the person will mostly consist of. Some children will get lucky and have enough sense to reject the hateful things their parents taught them, others will not. The children who decide to go against what they were taught can always pour the hate from their bucket and fill it with other positive things. But  sometimes there are things that leave behind trace stains that can never be washed away.