Memories of my Black Irish family in Boston

Last week, I participated in a small Black History Month event in my office building. I volunteered to speak about my experience with racism and having biracial family members.

When I volunteered and told the event organizer what I intended to share, she approved — though I wasn’t totally confident it was the kind of material she had in mind when she was looking for speakers.

Consequently, when she called on me to take the microphone after she and a few others had read poetry by black authors, I opened with what I thought everyone in the small, diverse crowd was thinking, “What’s this white guy doing up here?!”

I expected a laugh, but none was forthcoming. Crickets. Hmmm. It was then that I realized my audience was going to be very respectful and receptive to what I was going to say…or they had already tuned me out.

Here’s what I said (with additional comments that I wished I had mentioned at the time that add more context):

I was raised in San Diego, North San Diego County, actually. And in my high school of 3,000 kids, I think we had one black guy. So I didn’t know much about African-Americans when I was growing up.

My parents were from Boston, and they moved our family to San Diego in the early 1960s. My grandparents on both sides were immigrants. My dad’s parents were from Italy and my mom’s parents were from Ireland. Both sets of grandparents immigrated to the U.S. in or before the 1920s.