Chad and Kisstopher talk about racism and how it has affected them throughout their lives. Chad talks about growing up oblivious to his racist environment and how it’s been being faced with racism as an adult. Kisstopher talks about her experiences growing up and living with racism of different varieties.

Content Note

Two slurs for white people are used in this episode when Chad describes his childhood experience, and ethnic/racial slurs generally are discussed (but not used).

Transcript

K: So, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about racism.

C: As one does.

K: Yes. And, for me, racism is something I think about almost every single day.

C: I don’t think about it every single day.

K: You don’t think about it every single day?

C: There are a lot of days that I don’t think that I think about anything. I just sleep the whole day.

K: Okay. (laughs) So, for, just to loop people in that may not have been listening to the whole time, but I don’t think I’ve ever said this on the podcast, what my heritage is. So, I am African American, Native American–specifically Cherokee–Jewish, French, and Dutch. 

C: And I am… English and Norwegian and a lot of lies. 

K: (laughs) So, for me, when I think of racism, there is- there is not a time in my life when racism wasn’t part of my story. Because one of the, the first things that I ever learned about my mother was that she fled Alabama because she had fallen in love with my brother’s father. We had different fathers. I’m the last of 14 kids. My father- so, I’m the last of 14 for my father. And then my mother had a child with someone else. So, I have a total of 14 siblings because I’m actually the last of a total of 15, but it gets really kind of mixed up when I explain it, so I just shorthand it and say I’m the last of 14, even though I’m the last of 15.

C: You have one half-brother from your mother’s side.

K: Yes.

C: And 14 half-siblings from your father’s side.

K: No, I have 13 half-siblings.

C: 13, yes, because you’re the last of 14. Got it.

K: Yes. So, I don’t count me when I say I’m the last of 14 kids.

C: Got it, just like I don’t count me when I say I have 18 siblings of some stripe.

K: Correct. So, we both have the same habit, and it can be very confusing. So if you know me in real life and you’ve asked me “from the same mother and father?” I usually say yes. Because I find that question to be offensive and intrusive and none of your damn business.

C: Okay? Who was boinking? Who was boinking?

K: Yeah, just like, what does it matter? Because I don’t feel any less related to them.

C: No

K: And I feel like that would discount my relationship with them. So, I have the same relationship with all of my siblings, which is that I don’t talk to them.

C: I have that same relationship.

K: (laughs)

C: I have never met several of mine.

K: So, for the first batch of siblings, the main reason you don’t talk to them is because of racism. Circling back, see how we’re doing that. For my siblings, racism isn’t the reason. I just don’t like them. (laughs)

C: Uh-huh.

K: So, for me, the first story that I heard about- that I can remember hearing about my family growing up was that my mother had fallen in love with my brother’s father. And she lived in Alabama, and her father was a Klansman who was very high up in the Klan. And at the time, this was in the 1960s, in Alabama as a white woman, you could not consent to have sex with a black man. So, her father would have killed him if he had known that my mother and him were seeing each other. And they were young and in love, and so they ran away to California.

C: Mhmm.

K: And in Calif