I can't believe you brought a black person home!

The year was 1978. Early August around lunch time. Our school teachers were on strike and so we had just held a players led varsity football practice at a local park.  My parents had volunteered to cook hamburgers and hot dogs for the team. I made the announcement at practice and invited everyone over.

Everything went well. My mother was an awesome cook and naturally went overboard. In addition to hamburgers and hot dogs cooked by dad on the grill There was potato salad, baked beans, chips, veggies, assorted drinks and a freshly baked chocolate cake. She spent hours preparing for this event.

Ours was a nice house in a nice neighborhood. The school district was generally well to do with small pockets of poverty here and there.  It was a diverse community. While predominately white, our schools had blacks, orientals (as they were referred to then), Hispanics, Indians and Native Americans. Probably others ethnic groups were represented as well. I know we had foreign exchange students from Brazil, South Africa and Germany at least.

Religions? Christians in the form of Catholic, Protestant and Mormons, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and at least one Buddhist or someone who dabbled in Buddhism anyways.

We had farmers, small business owners, factory workers, doctors, nurses, attorneys, custodians, preachers, teachers, restaurant workers, construction workers and any number of other professions represented in our community.

As I said, it was a diverse community, especially for one in 1978.

That doesn't mean there wasn't tension between the different groups represented. There were incidents of racism during my high school years, but the general populace of the school was pretty much against such things.

Then racism hit at home. Not close to home. At -  my -  home.

You see, we had black players on our football team. When I invited the team over for lunch that day after practice in the park I did not exclude anyone. And since we were friends at school and on the team the black kids came along too.  Maybe I was naive or just didn't know any better.

Everything went great at lunch. Mom and dad, my siblings all worked hard to make everyone feel welcomed. It was a good time. The only glitch was mom had tried a new cake recipe that had coffee grounds in the recipe and it was not one of her better ideas. Other than that we ate and talked. Joked around and generally had a great team bonding experience.  After a couple of hours things broke up and everyone departed with plans to meet up again later that day at the county fair.

As we finished tidying up the kitchen my mother said to me, "I can't believe you brought a black person home!"   Those were her exact words. I was a bit taken aback.  What ensued was a discussion - not a heated one, just a discussion about that being the first time a black person had ever been in my parents home.  I cannot say they were offended, but they were most definitely shocked.  I wasn't told to never do that again either.  My parents were simply flabbergasted. My mother more so than my father I think as dad was a salesman and certainly interacted with the black community more than his sheltered housewife did.

I did a lot of thinking in the following days. As I said, I knew racism existed and had witnessed instances in the school among my peers and on athletic teams between teammates, but racists seemed to be the exception and always the majority sided with the victim of racism over the perpetrator of racism.

I thought back to wonder why none of my black friends had ever been over to our home before that day. I had been to theirs on numerous occasions. We ate at the same table for lunch each day at school and socialized together.  One thing I realized was my house was not a neighborhood hangout to begin with.  Big family and constant chaos. I liked to get out of the rat race that was our daily life and into the calmer atmosphere of my friends homes.  I did speak to my black friends about that day. I learned some things including their surprise at being so warmly welcomed into an upper middle class whites home. My folks had hid their astonishment well it seems.  They related how they were not always extended such hospitality.

I begin to realize how naive I had been about racism and was worse off for having my eyes opened that day. The purity of life as I knew it was challenged on my home turf.  I began to understand racism as not a few isolated incidents at school now and again, but as a constant in my friends lives.  I was glad, not proud, just happy that my own family had grown a bit that day in August.  Were we racists before?  I don't know.  I grew to appreciate my bringing a group of friends home that included blacks was the start of better social understanding within our home. The beginning of relationships being built.  The beginning of trust being established.

Something good happened that day.