Written by a white woman:

Our spiritual community was receiving some training in the practice of Council - each person listening and speaking from the heart.  One of the exercises involved remembering a person in our childhood who was a strong spiritual influence.  I immediately thought of Lena, a black woman who lived with our family for many years as our maid and cook. We lived in an all-white suburb of New York City, where there was (and probably still is) an unspoken and unwritten rule that you were never to sell your house to a Jew or a black person.  However, you could employ one as a live-in servant in your home.

And so I spoke affectionately of Lena, who was part Cherokee, divorced, and mother of a daughter who lived in New York City with relatives.  Lena prayed unabashedly and sang hymns as she worked.  She comforted me, my sister, and my mother whenever there was a family upset.  She was a rock in a storm and I loved her fiercely.  I knew she loved me as her "baby."

After sharing my memories of Lena I was shocked at the response of an African American woman in the group.  Crying and shaking, she told me how disturbed and disappointed she was to hear what I had said.  I had no idea why she was upset.

Question for the reader: What aspects of the white woman's story
might have been particularly upsetting for the African American woman?

View Commentary to African American Vignette #1

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