People never cease to amaze me... Life has taught me not to be impressed with the outer entrapping's of folks. We make a lot of assumptions about people from what they wear, what they drive, the positions that they hold and even how successful we think they how...by a scale that we hold as those status symbols. But whether they are preachers, or other professionals or a homeless person laying on the sidewalks of city streets. We don't really know who they are, or to what extent their character leans until we are able to see into their private lives. I like the saying that the popular minister T.D. JAKES said in one of his sermons, He said " I don't want a person to tell me what great works they have done, I will be able to tell who they are by how they treat the most insignificant person".
Racism is not just a black experience opposed on Negroes through white Americans. I have witness as much racism if not more from Mexicans who somehow dominant many work places. It is a known fact that once they have gained the favor of an employer, they will inadvertently help to get rid of people, to assist their family members and friends in jobs, until they dominant that work place. Mexicans are the new Negroes, but they are better than the originals Negroes whose backs were the building blocks of America. Then, there are the Muslims, which are considered to be the enemies that America sleeps with... much is to be understood their but, what puzzles me most is my own personal experience... the fight of racism in my own family. If you ask most black mothers about the love they have for their children, they believe that it is impossible for a mother to hate her child. Which is exactly what my mother Mary Elizabeth Tsatoke (Horse) Jones did.
I met my mother when I was 18, however the relationship had no time to grow. My mother who had been receiving monetary help from my oldest sister, Beverly Bunton and her Husband Dallas Bunton Senior... was expressly asked to have no dealings with me. I have often asked, would I have done the same... and I have often came up with the same answer. I would have told my daughter that I loved her, and that she had a right to choose not to have a relationship with her sister, but because I had given life to both... I would at least try to form a relationship with this lost child who had taken the time to find me. I guess my mother was embarrassed that she had been a prostitute, it couldn't have been anything to do with race since she had had two black daughters, both whom she did not keep. What was this...a young prostitute that took advantage of military men, who had given birth to four different nationalities. One white, one Indian, one Mexican and two blacks...to say the least she certainly got around.
I was once told by my brother in law..." I don't believe in that inter racial stuff...I don't want to deal with you...and I don't want my children dealing with you!... and he added ..." the only reason we put up with Lee is because she is married to him". This struck me as odd since my sister- his wife was mixed...and so were my other sisters. Did this mean...they by not being black was somehow considered better, or whiter, or not mixed. So, I did what he asked, and stayed away...I was okay until I got a letter for a hearing that my mother had passed. There was some legal matters that were unsettled, concerning 175 acres of land and 5 oil producing properties. I thought...with all I had been through...maybe I would get something. My sister, who is the senior Vice President of the North American Credit Services or The North American Medical Services...didn't need the money, so not looking for anything big...I thought..a little of something would have been a blessing. However my two sisters took everything, then they hug me and rode down the same elevator without saying a word...went out the same door without so much as a goodbye.
But really what hurt me to the core was...my sister, Beverly Bunton...took out a sheet of copy paper with our mothers picture on it and said, this is all I have to give... Not a real picture, but a copy of one... and she handed me an obituary from my mothers death were she did not even acknowledge that I existed. Why would anyone do such a thing, was she purposefully adding insult to injury or did she just not know any better. Her words said " I love you"...but her actions were far from any type of love...as a sister or even as a human being. My sister had no human compassion... for me or my children. The bible teaches us that ...If we say we love a god who we can not see...and can not love our brother who we do see...that we lie and are liars, and the truth does not dwell in us. Our grandfather, Rev. Cecil Arthur HuntingHorse Tsatoke would have said... "give her what is due her". I know he would have because "he said it before, however, the payment was falsified and stolen, and it was done so with the permission of those in authority at the Kiowa Indian Agency in Anadarko, Oklahoma at that time.
Natives...like some blacks, often talk about what they are due...but how many mixed breeds do they reject or refuse... doesn't coming from the same womb count for something? It was told to me by an Indian artist whose work is in the Smithsonian, that the fact that my grandfather "Chief Hunting Horse" was a scout to George Custer...was not considered something to brag about, but that it was something to be ashamed of because he betrayed his own people. It's rarely mentioned that he was a half breed child himself produced from a captive woman who was either Spanish or white, or that he had two wives...both sisters or that his son, Cecil Horse refused to bury Indians who were not Christians. And now... you tell me...they didn't want it to be told they had blacks in the family. No...this story is "the Real Imitation of Life" ...my sisters are imitating that they have no black sister...they are fooling all who they have dealings with on any level... but the greatest hoodwinking is on themselves. How can they look themselves in the mirror...or live joyously knowing what they have done, knowing what they have said... or are they simply motivated by nothing other than selfish ambition. This type of racism beats all...if men can hate their own blood...then...no wonder we find it easy to hate others.
I was very hurt the first days after being reminded that I was hated by my own flash and blood. But each day the pain gets alittle lighter... healing again will be a process and at 60...who needs this type of stress...
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