And where did this ‘broken-ness’ come from?

From our parents. The conversations around the dinner table. Our grandparents, the ones who were children when they were brought here from countries who were kicking their parents to the curb — poverty, war, discrimination, their kind being pushed out by a ‘better kind’, who were able and happy to stay where they were.

Brought here as children. Born here to people who weren’t. We were the poor the tablet held by Lady Liberty tells of.

The family who taught us to ‘fear those who don’t look like you.’

The time(s) my grandmother lined her 6 young grandchildren up at the plate glass window in the front room, pointed to a house across the street and said, ‘stay away from those people, they’re brown/black, Not Christian.’ She knew nothing of the people she taught us to fear.

How many times I heard, and continue to hear, my family members use ugly racial terms to describe things and people they know nothing about.

Everything, including fear, arrogance, ignorance — racism, and the comfort in believing such (ugly) things are taught around the family table. It was taught to me by my immigrant grandparents, passed down like a family tradition.