Racism.

Get ready to be offended.

If you offend easily... please go read something 

else I have written since this post is off-the-cuff and very raw.

Today, while grocery shopping with the babies, 

I found out what it's like to be "conspicuous".

There was a group of two ladies and a man 

who kept checking us out, mumbling, and rolling their eyes.

I ignored it, but wondered what was up.

On another aisle, I was walking past them and just then, 

one of the women makes a disapproving face 

and motions toward/over my girls with her hand... 

"See THIS... THIS is what I DON'T like to see. 

THIS is what I was talking about before when I said...."

And they kept walking. 

I stood there for a moment...

deer-in-the-headlights.

The babies were looking at them and at me.

I turned to look at the group as they were walking...

and they were still talking about us.

Motioning in our direction, shaking their heads.

Not knowing what to do...

I said, "Girls?"

They say (in unison), "Ah bet?" (Amharic for "what?")

I said... "I love you!"

They said "I love you, too!"

And I kissed my baby boy on his gooey, sticky face.

Do you want to know why this makes me even more angry?

It didn't come from a group of white people.

Nope. They were as black as my babies... and they were racist.

They saw me shopping with my precious babies and 

all they could see was a "white lady" with black kids.

Do you know what else makes me mad?

As a white person, raised in the south

 (ooohhh EVIL southern white people...)...

I am tired of being assumed to be the racist one.

I don't know about you... 

but I have been taught my entire life that white people 

are racist and black people are not. 

Racism is an equal-opportunity-destroyer.

I'm white. Yes, according to Loreal, I may be "light taupe"... but I'm white.

I am a white person.

And I love three small black people.

LOVE them.

LOVE, love, love them.

It breaks my heart and makes me want to flat-out-destroy anyone who would ever call them a derogatory name because they are MY babies and you better NOT talk about them in a bad way. ANY of them.

And *I* am supposed to be the racist one.

Because I grew up in Tennessee.

Because I am white.

Well let me tell you one thing, black people from the grocery store today...

you have become the very thing you have hated for generations.

You have become the oppressor. 

You have become the hater.

You have become the racist bigots.

You have become the VERY thing Dr. King DIED to end.

You have become HATE.

You look at me and my babies and see pigment differences in our skin cells.

I look at you with pity because you will NEVER know 

the depth of love it is possible to have for a child 

not born from your own gene pool. 

You will NEVER know what it is to see hands intertwined 

- not matching - 

but BELONGING together.

And that is pitiful.

You should be pitied.

And you should be ashamed.

Where are you when the orphaned children in Africa

go to bed hungry night after night after night after night?

Where are you when they fall and get hurt and 

need someone to make it better?

Where are you when they are sick and need a Mommy?

Where ARE you?

I know where I am.

I am holding my babies.

I am being a Mommy.

THIS is what LOVE looks like.

****EDITED TO SAY****

This is not a "black people are racist" post.

It is a "PEOPLE CAN be racist" post.

These three people at the store could have just 

as easily have been white, tan or any other shade of skin. 

The hate is still there, alive and kicking.