My boomer mom was a kind Obama fan who also used the N-word. We’re all complicated | Opinion

My mom was a complicated woman — warm and loving, yet deeply scarred by her childhood, escaping into marriage the moment she turned 18. She was stubborn, warm, generous to a fault, and carried prejudices that were hard to shake.

Never in my life did I have to wonder if my mom loved her kids. She showed it constantly and consistently. Even in her mistakes and while fighting her own insecurities, and the sometimes bad decisions born out of those insecurities, she was a good mother. I miss her tremendously.

My mom called me one day many years ago and said she had a little extra money and wanted to give me some. I was a new mom myself, off work, and that little bit of money made a huge difference to me. My infant son was dangerously underweight and required the most expensive formula on the market. Being able to pay doctor co-pays and buy a month’s supply of formula at once were the biggest gifts. She frequently put her life on hold to go care for an ill family member for weeks on end. She would drop anything she had going on to offer what she could to anyone she knew needed some help.

She did these things often to her own detriment. Sometimes it meant she would have to go on a payment plan for various bills because she had overextended herself to help someone. And here’s another truth: My mom most likely didn’t “come into extra money” that she wanted to share. She most likely went without in order to help her grandson and remove some worry from me.

I’ve been thinking about how her politics and her values have shaped me. What would she think and feel about the state of our politics today? Would her prejudices have shifted as well? I don’t think it’s possible to know for sure, but I knew her very well and feel confident in making a guess.

She was born to working-class Southern Democrats. If you aren’t familiar, Southern Democrats supported the working class, labor rights and social policies to help the poor — but only for white people. Black communities were deliberately excluded from these efforts. After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, most of those Southern Democrats became Reagan Democrats — and then just Republicans. They looked like Democrats in most ways, but they couldn’t get past their prejudice, and sometimes outright hatred of Black people.

That is the ideology my mother was born into, and some of it rubbed off. In the background of that reality, she was 10 years old when John F. Kennedy was killed, 15 when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed — events that must have shaped her understanding of politics and leadership in complicated ways.

My mom used the n-word often, especially in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Not so much in her later years, though. Yet, I can say with my whole chest that she was not a racist. Some may argue that point with me, but I knew my mother’s heart, and if confronted with the choice of actually harming someone or voting for someone who would cause harm to people of color, she would never do that. She voted Democratic her whole life until her death in 2015. I remember talking with her about Barack Obama and his presidency. She spoke highly of him and would call me to make sure I was watching whatever speech he was about to make.

I’m thankful she didn’t have to see the era of Donald Trump and the nastiness it has brought. She struggled with her prejudices, and I like to think she softened to them in later years. Her instinct to help others and her generosity can exist alongside painful biases. Both can be true, and it was.

We all inherit complicated beliefs and values — some that lift us up, and others that weigh us down. The challenge is learning to hold onto what serves us, nurture empathy where we can, and quietly discard the rest. I believe that’s what my mom tried to do. It’s what I’ve tried to do. I fall short sometimes, but I know it’s important to keep trying.

Breaking free from those deeply rooted childhood lessons — the voices that cling to your thoughts and shape your instincts — is hard, but it’s worth the effort. It’s the kind of hard that makes you stronger, kinder and more whole.

My mom would’ve been 72 this February. Sometimes her voice and laugh are so present and clear in my mind, I swear she could be in the other room. I can only imagine her personal growth if she were allowed more time.

I’m certain I would have been proud of her, and I hope she would’ve been proud of me.