{"id":37999,"date":"2014-10-29T01:17:12","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T01:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37999"},"modified":"2021-09-14T02:19:42","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T02:19:42","slug":"one-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37999","title":{"rendered":"One of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of Us<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Boston Magazine<\/a>
\nNovember 2014<\/a> (published 2014-10-28)<\/p>\n

Jennifer J. Roberts<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPortrait of the author by Jason Grow<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

I was a typical Southie<\/a> kid, one of six, born to a single mother, raised in a triple-decker<\/a>, surrounded by Whitey Bulger\u2019s<\/a> violence and fierce Irish pride. There was only one thing that kept me on the outside: Despite my mother\u2019s claims to the contrary, we were black.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was six years old, I was bused to school at John Winthrop Elementary<\/a> on the Dorchester<\/a>\/Roxbury<\/a> line. The school was in a mostly black neighborhood, about 3 miles from the South Boston<\/a> neighborhood where I lived, but even then I understood it as enemy territory.<\/p>\n

My mother had made that clear: She was \u00adaggressive about her stance against busing<\/a>, and \u201cthose blacks.\u201d By which she didn\u2019t mean us. I was the youngest of six kids, and the darkest, but if you asked my mother, she\u2019d tell you we were Irish. Virginia Roberts was a proud supporter of Jim Kelly<\/a> and Billy Bulger<\/a>, hugged them flamboyantly at every St. Paddy\u2019s Day<\/a> Parade. They would give her a kiss on the cheek. I would cringe. Tall, thin, and attractive, she wore a shamrock<\/a> brooch on her housecoat. Her kinky hair was usually covered by a kerchief or a wig. Her skin, like mine, was a warm beige in the winter and a deep red-brown in the summer. But we were Irish, she insisted, and nothing else.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sitting in a neighbor\u2019s kitchen, racial slurs would buzz around like hungry mosquitoes waiting to suck my blood out and leave me cold. Inevitably one would land on my mother. \u201cWhy can\u2019t they just stay in their neighborhood? No offense, Ginny,\u201d waving a cigarette at my mother. \u201cYou know we don\u2019t mean you!\u201d My mother would swat away their words with indifference; of course they didn\u2019t mean her! She\u2019d scoff right along with them.<\/p>\n

When I was a child, the origin of our shared skin tone and hair texture was a mystery. Out on the street, though, kids had theories: \u201cI heard your grandmother was raped by a black man,\u201d they\u2019d say to me, or, \u201cI heard your mother was found on a doorstep and your grandmother took her in.\u201d What was clear to me, even as a little girl, was that my mother wanted no part of our shared racial heritage. The bubble of denial she created for herself was solid Teflon<\/a>. Everything rolled right off of her and onto me. At home, I was Irish. On the street, I was something different: \u201cjigaboo,\u201d \u201cnigger,\u201d \u201cOreo,\u201d \u201cJenny the spook.\u201d These names were spoken to me almost as if they were endearments, nicknames. Nearly everyone in Southie<\/a> had a nickname.<\/p>\n

I was from Southie; I was one of them. I was their black girl…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was a typical Southie kid, one of six, born to a single mother, raised in a triple-decker, surrounded by Whitey Bulger\u2019s violence and fierce Irish pride. There was only one thing that kept me on the outside: Despite my mother\u2019s claims to the contrary, we were black.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,125,8,20],"tags":[3711,18301,18303,21762,3712,18300,18302],"class_list":["post-37999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-boston","tag-boston-magazine","tag-jennifer-j-roberts","tag-jennifer-roberts","tag-massachusetts","tag-south-boston","tag-southie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37999"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61480,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37999\/revisions\/61480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}