“My lifelong friend is a racist!”

Alberta Wilson

antoutoume@aol.com

“My lifelong friend is a racist!”

By Alberta Wilson, as told to me by my daughter-in-law (July 17, 2020)

It happened earlier this evening. My daughter-in-law often meets up with a group of friends but they had been respecting the constraints of the coronavirus until one of them had a personal emergency. As fate would have it, the friend with the urgent matter had to leave her house and they all reconvened at the home of, let’s call her Susan.

As the conversation of the tragedy wore on, someone mentioned an absentee friend and Susan blurted out, “I don’t like her; she’s too liberal.”

My daughter-in-law, let’s call her Amy, disagreed that the missing bud was liberal, freely adding her opinion that she felt she was more “middle of the road” and “such a sweet person!”

Okay! “But what about all that Black Lives Matter stuff she’s been posting on Facebook?” Susan wanted to know. Well, Amy ventured, it was kinda like just encouraging people to be open to what’s happening in the country.

I wasn’t there and I wouldn’t be because I am not a white woman and I do not have this type of lifelong relationship with a group of southern white women. I would never be privy to the ensuing conversation because these are intimate open gatherings among BFFs — White BFFs among themselves. Not having been physically present, my reporting here is “hearsay” in legal…