Women of Color; Or, How my Dad Became a Liberal

[Dear Readers: I am back after having a cold for the past few days. -- Lauren]

My father was a life-long Republican. He doesn't like talking about his political views in public, so I am probably violating some level of his privacy here. The fact that he doesn't discuss his political views might have made it easier for him to shift. He would have no crow to eat after changing his mind because so few people were aware of his opinions.

Nevertheless, I have been perplexed by the change in views on social justice over the past year. It started with the Republican primaries. My dad hated Trump. Hated him.

"He's an asshole," my dad said of Trump early on. Maybe it was after Trump mocked a disabled reporter. Maybe it was after he heard the tape of Trump saying he would date Ivanka if she weren't his daughter. Maybe it was after Trump had said he would build a wall to keep out "bad hombres" or after he started trash-talking Muslims. I don't remember, but I know it was before the "pussy grab."

My dad had been talking about how the #blacklivesmatter movement reminds him of the 1960's.

"I thought we were done with all of this," he said, surprised that some marginalized groups were still struggling.

How did this shift happen? My dad was never a bigot, but nor would I say he had been a champion for minorities.

My cousin posted a video on Facebook about racial bias. The man in this video said people with a diverse group of friends have less racial bias than those who have a homogenous group of friends. This makes sense. For work, Jack read Blindspot by Mahzarin R. Banaji, a professor at Harvard, and Anthony Greenwald, a professor at the University of Washington. Their book, which was written before the video was produced, which further elaborates on this point.

And then it clicked. Every day, my dad spends two hours at the Memory Care Unit with my mom during lunch. My mom smiles, but she doesn't engage in conversation. So who does my dad talk to while he is with my mom? The nurses, the hospice workers, the aides, all of whom are women, and most of whom are women of color. They all speak English, and they all have been trained in how to take care of people with memory issues. Some of the women are black. One wears a hijab. Some were probably not born in the U.S., and they all are taking care of the woman my father loves. They are kind and tender to my mom and take care of her in a way my father cannot. He is deeply appreciative of their work.

There never would have been a time in my father's life where he would spend two hours a day with women of color. He was an accountant in a corporate office, and we lived in white neighborhoods. Now that my mother is in the Memory Care Unit, these women might be the only people he talks to all day. Sharon, my mom's hospice nurse, is hilarious, which seems incongruous for a woman working with people who are soon to die. Instead of being mournful, she tries to bring joy to not only my mother in her last days but to my father as well.

Some could say what these women do is menial labor: cleaning my mother, feeding her, changing her diapers. Or, this could be skilled work: managing her meds, tracking how much she eats and sleeps, and monitoring her moods, as changes in her temperament could be a sign of illness. In our modern times, we don't have a job category called "Caring," nor do we value this work as much as other types of work.  I am not talking about "caregiving" where items in that job description include things like washing hair or doing laundry. I mean caring. These women are like mothers to my mother, caring for her as if she were a toddler. They distract and redirect her when she is angry or ornery. When my mother was screaming "Bullshit!" they smiled and told my mother they love her. My father is genuinely appreciative. It doesn't matter what kinds of skills are needed for this job: They are doing work that he could not do. When they take care of her, they are also taking care of him.

Somewhere along the way my father shifted. Insults from Trump about people in these demographic groups became insults to the people who care for my mom, insults to the only people my dad might talk to on any given day.