DUers of Color: Tell Your Story

[catrose]

122. White supremacists would love to have my DNA

All white but for 3% Native American & 3% Sephardic Jewish.

But born & raised in the South. Just a couple of stories: Senior trip in Destin, FL for our Catholic girls' school, very progressive & activist. (Yes, the Catholic Church used to be like that.) The discussion was dinner, and the black girls were wondering if they could go to a certain diner. One of the white girls gave them directions & quoted menu & prices before slithering out of the room as she understood that they were wondering if they'd be allowed in, and that such a consideration had never crossed our little white minds.

Fast forward to 2008, when I'm acting as some kind of observer for Democrats at the election. I forget what the post was called, but my job was to ask people coming out of the polls if they'd had problems voting. I was dressed in Sarah Palin drag: red jacket, black skirt, brown hair done up, wide glasses (seemed safer in the Deep South). Nobody has any problem until about 10 minutes until 7 pm (closing time). A young black woman came out, furious because they wouldn't let her vote. She'd moved recently but hadn't received a new voting card identifying her precinct. So she printed her information from the county voter rolls and brought every form of ID and address confirmation she could think of, including her marriage license. I asked if they'd offered a provisional ballot. They hadn't done that, just told her to drive across town to her old precinct and vote there (in 10 minutes). So I went inside with her and said to the judges, "This lady needs a provisional ballot." "Of course," they said, and sat right down with her. I watched from across the room as she filled it out and mused over a society where I can ask for what I want & get it without a murmur and someone who lives a few blocks from me but has a different skin color has to fight for what is legally hers. This isn't the country I learned about in my history & civics classes.