It’s my last day in San Francisco, and I have yet to got back to my family’s home. The schedules haven’t meshed, but I wonder if some part of me doesn’t want to be back in the Russell living room, the dreaded place that my family gathered after my uncle died eight years ago. The Texas cousins drove down to pay their respects to the dead, while being quite disrespectful of the living.  They hadn’t come to my wedding, so I proudly passed a mini photo album around. I was so proud and in love with my family, and I wanted to share.  Turns out that was a bad idea. They summarily snickered, scoffed and giggled in derision when they saw photos of my husband and new baby. This event hurt me deeply, and I talk about it in great detail in Chapter Fourteen (“How to Go from Mr. Rainbeau to Mr. Right”) of SWIRLING, because it speaks to the irony and hypocrisy in the black community. The irony came from the fact that these same cousins who were outright laughing at my family had out-of-wedlock children with no fathers present. The hypocrisy came from the fact that the elder women in the snicker crew had about 50+ mixed race grandchildren that the black, MALE cousins procreated, and they didn’t seem find that a laughing matter, either.

Welp, I posted my feelings up on the BB&W fan page, and boy did that get…uh…interesting.

Here’s what I wrote for my status:

Being back in SF brings back memories. Like the part in #Swirling where I mention that some members of my family snickered at my white husband’s picture. These were the same women who had multiple kids out of wedlock and no fathers in sight, but my husband, who committed to me, married me BEFORE we conceived was the object of derision? PFFFT!

Not 30 seconds after I posted did I get this comment from a faux-fan of BB&W:

Does it make you better than them because your husband married you before concieving? Is that what you’re saying?

Ohmygawdinhebbin how the Hades did she get THAT from what I wrote?? Then she follows up with this comment:

I was a product of a single parent and so were my other brothers and sisters. Not because my mother chose to be, but because my father passed away. None of us have been privvy to any of the things mentioned. One of us is in the NFL. Another is in the military. One is still in high-school, two still in middle school, and my younger sister is in college. I am a college graduate. I own my own business. I am a NY Times best-selling author under my pen name and I’m married to my children’s father. Just because she’s single with children doesn’t mean she wants to be and it doesn’t make me any better than that other woman is. If we truly want to help these young women, then we have to find a better way other than looking down our noses at them.

Wait…

My family openly LAUGHS at my intact, interracial family and I’m looking down AT THEM??? Da hell planet do dat happen on???

Oh yeah. The Black Planet.