Dear Queenie,
I am the child of one black parent and one white. I am very light-skinned and have Caucasian features, so anyone who doesn’t know my family would never suspect that I am biracial and I know that to a bigoted person that makes me black even though I don’t look it.
It has happened that people who don’t know me make very nasty comments about black people in front of me and I hate to keep silent but I just don’t know what to say.
Queenie, can you give me a good response to such remarks?—Offended
Dear Offended,
How about “None of the black people I know are like that.” And when they ask you whom you know that is black, tell them “Me, my parents, my brothers and sisters, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins and (if appropriate) my husband and children.”
If that does not shut those people up, they are not worth wasting time on and you should just walk away from them and (try to) have nothing to do with them in the future.
