Racism Mention - Tumblr Posts
The Best Story at the Cookout - Or, how one of my greatx6 grandfathers became an eternal bonfire story
(Casual warning for death, and fire, and also some mentions of racism. Names changed for safety. Blame the hyper-specific poll trend for this)
I've been threatening for years that I was going to eventually start sharing these family stories on tumblr. It only seems right that the hyperspecific poll trend is what gets me started. So - to set the stage. This is about my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather on my grandfather's side (you know, or well - don't know - the grandfather that was almost certainly part of organized crime, given the fact that the local KKK feared his connections more than they hated the color of his skin).
Now I don't remember the name of this greatx6 grandpa, which is good tbh since names are all changed. Plucking a name out of the air, I'm gonna call him Great Grandpa Brent.
Now, Great Grandpa Brent was always someone the family as a whole was worried was going to wind up on fire. He inherited the auto repair shop he worked at from his boss at the time when the old man retired, which was a problem to many others - because it was a black man taking over a white man's shop, and also happened to be the only auto repair shop that could be considered local for the most of them. Which led to a lot of fear, because Great Grandpa Brent already had burn scars from a story I was never told the whole of that involved a burning cross in the front yard. But he operated that auto repair shop with limited incidents for a long time - long enough that he met his girlfriend and had kids and Great Grandpa Brent was still running that shop. Until the day he was working in that shop and decided to blaze it. It being himself. As in, Great Grandpa Brent spontaneously caught on fire. He wasn't a smoker, and he was a bit of a stickler about safety as far as the family remembers. And as far as the folks who were working that day, while their exact details are different and filtered by what they were doing at the time (which leads me to believe this wasn't planned or a coverup, personally, but this is still allegedly so take all this with several grains of salt) - they remember him remarking on how blisteringly hot it was just before he was on fire. In the auto repair shop. In the auto repair shop where they were working on automobiles. Now, I don't really blame those fellas for hightailing it out of there, because Great Grandpa Brent stopped moving next to a wooden wall. Which proceeded to catch fire itself. In short order, to hear it told - the whole shop was ablaze. Y'all would be forgiven to assume this is where the story stops, but it's not. Because, y'see - Great Grandpa Brent had that girlfriend, and kids. So the folks he'd been working with went to go tell her that they'd seen her boyfriend stop moving, and he'd spontaneously combusted, and there was a good chance he was dead but at least it wasn't because of the KKK, so that's a silver lining covered in ash. Except they get there, Great Grandpa Brent's brother included - and they don't even get to knock on the door. She's already opening it, and her first words are "He spontaneously combusted didn't he?" And she goes on to say that she'd had a dream about that the night before and chalked it up as a nightmare, because the Fear of being hate crimed doesn't really ebb and nothing had happened for so long. And they have to tell her that she's right - they saw it happen, Great Grandpa Brent has been burnt and nobody knew where the flame even came from. For a while, the family assumed that was that. Except, well... They had to sell the lot the auto repair shop had burnt down on, and the folks what bought it built an ice cream shop there. An ice cream shop that seemed to utterly hate anyone who was bloodkin to Great Grandpa Brent - between the food poisonings, and the food allergies, and the place tripping up folks and leading to far too many hurts. No one else ever got food poisoning there, just bloodkin. And so Great Grandpa Brent became one of the most told stories at the family cookouts, usually told right in front of an open flame - and the only thing the family remembers him for is how he died. Oh, and not to go to that ice cream shop because it hates us. That ice cream shop isn't there anymore, just an empty lot - so it's a bit of a moot point now, but given the fact that the death of the ice cream shop is less than a decade old, maybe it has its own significance.
//// (If you read this, thanks for reading! This is an actual story passed down during family cookouts by my bloodkin, and the very first time I was told the whole story was because I ducked into the ice cream shop and felt far too hot and smelled smoke, and upon telling this to my mother the next day - which was en route to one of the cookouts, she dragged me to my grandfather and made him tell me the story. I never set foot into that shop again.)
A PSA (Continued)
It's ok if you're white.
It's ok if you're black.
It's ok if you're Arabic
It's ok if you're Latino.
It's ok if you're a Native American.
It's ok if you're Asian.
It's ok if you're a mixed race.
You don't have to feel ashamed for your skin color. Your skin color is something that you cannot control. Even if your ancestors have done horrid things, you are not the same person as them. However, you should be ashamed when you bully others because of their race.
[Images description: A ten part Twitter thread by Suhail Matar. The tweets read as follows:
1) Because I mostly user twitter academically, let me share my experience as a Palestinian in Israeli academia. A thread.
2) I attended the Technion (In Haifa, my city) between 2004 and 2011. This coincided with Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon, 2008/9 war on Gaza, and 2010 attack on the flotilla headed for Gaza.
3) This meant many protests at the university’s gates. We were usually some 150 students, chanting support for Gaza, say and condemnations of Israeli aggression.
4) Across the street, without fail, was always a 10x bigger protest: huge Israeli flags, enraged Zionists jumping up and down yellow “DEATH TO ARABS! DEATH TO ARABS!” Our chants were 100% drowned The blind hatred in their eyes could have probably powered the campus.
5) These weren’t just random people. These were my Physical Chemistry professor, for example. He used to show up to lectures in full settler regalia. Imagine a US professor showing up to class in Proud Boys or KKK regalia.
6) It was that shy, tall, bespectacled student from year 2 who’d asked me for tips (having recently finished the bachelor’s program) only a few weeks prior. He was also there chanting “DEATH TO ARABS!” Oh, yes, he knew I was Palestinian.
7) We then had to go back to the lecture halls and literally sit with people who chanted for our death. Disciplinary action, you suggest? Hahahaha
8) Not to mention that, a few weeks later, those Israeli students who were recruited for the reserve army for whatever was it was would come back to university. We were sitting next to snipers and pilots who killed people, our people, in Gaza and Lebanon.
9) In the Technion we were “lucky” it didn’t go further. Other campuses are much more politically active, and Palestinian students are routinely harassed, attacked, arrested, expelled for simply raising a flag, or expressing their Palestinianness.
10) This is what your fancy collab with an Israeli university looks like, under the surface. This is the grim reality of Israeli academia. Yes, it has top-notch education and great researchers. But it is severly lacking in basic humanity towards even its own Palestinians.]