By which I mean, “How much pressure do they put on you, and how do they exert that pressure?” not “How much ethical or moral obligation do you believe you have to conform to your family’s belief system for its own sake?”
Though you can answer that question as well, I suppose.
To get things rolling–on Labor Day I went to my sister’s house for a cook-out. About halfway through the afternoon, two of my nieces decided they wanted to head across the development to my younger niece’s godmother’s house, as her mother, another of my sister’s was visiting the godmother. Not wanting the girls to walk there alone, I accompanied them.
Arriving at the godmother’s house, I found my sister, the godmother (who is rather like a sister to me, for the record), and the godmother’s husband engaging in a spirited debate about the feds’ reaction to Katrina.
“It took so long because Bush hates black folk,” my sister said. “He’s nothing but a racist.”
Godmother and Godmother’s husband both agree. I felt compelled to dissent. “That’s not fair,” I said. “He’s appointed more blacks and women to office than any other president. I think he’s divorced from reality, and intellectually lazy, and helming a largely incompetent administration, and I’ll be happy so happy when his term is over I may dance an Irish jig, but I don’t think he’s a racist.”
This comment elicited howls of outrage from Sister and Godmother. (Godmother’s husband wisely chose to go have a beer.) Much of the following conversation (which went on back at the original sister’s house) became about me–about whether my refusal to ascribe the president’s response to malice meant that I was betraying my own race. My family’s always been vexed by my politics and religion, and the general opinion (expressed as affectionately as such an opinion can be) was that I was necessarily self-deceived and possibly self-loathing to think that President Bush isn’t a closet KKKer (and that he should be referred to respectfully because of his office).
What similar experiences have you lot had?
