The Curbside Prophet
I am a mid-twenties avid intersectional feminist, advocate, fighter, counselor, and friend. I will be graduating from Bucknell University in May with degrees in Psychology and Women’s & Gender Studies. I work with survivors of sexual assault and other trauma, and I fix computers for a living.
I often blog about what it is like to live at the intersections of a few different mental illnesses, queerness, and sexuality, along with posts about sexism, racism, rape culture, and LGBT rights. There is a trigger warning for these on my entire blog. You will see posts about depression, eating disorders, PTSD, panic disorder, and fat activism. This has been my safe space for four years now, and I reserve the right to ask you to leave it if necessary.
Welcome to my life.
…because the baby’s black.
And that branch of my mom’s family is super racist and bassackwards. And his parents don’t know yet. And no one knows what my aunt & uncle are going to do when they find out that their “precious little darling grandbaby,” that they have yet to see because they live in PA and my cousin & his family are in Texas, is black.
So, all of the rest of us know the race of the baby, and it doesn’t make one iota of difference. That four month old child was born a month prematurely with opiate & alcohol dependency to a mother who wasn’t able to care for him and gave him up for adoption, and it was decided by the people who decide those things that my cousin and his wife were the people in the area most suited to love and care for him, and so they will, because caring for people is what we do. Given their respective medical and personal backgrounds, this is probably true.
Caring for people regardless of, but not blind to, their situation or color or creed is what my father’s branch of the family has always practiced. Same with my mother’s side, minus the color or creed part. So this whole concept of caring for a human being who cannot survive on their own or needs assistance is not unusual for us. What’s unusual is having to tiptoe around one detail because we’re afraid of setting off the racist nonsense that is my uncle & his family.
All I have to say is that I’m terrified for this child.
