Racism: In a New World
In the early 1940’s my father, a Greek National was forced to move to the United States as a World War II political refugee. He served as a lieutenant and was recognized as an officer and part of the gorilla forces in the Greek Navy. Greece eventually was occupied by Germany and it was then that he was smuggled into England by allied forces. A couple years later he moved to the United States and made his way to San Francisco where he met his wife, a Greek Sicilian woman from Modesto. They made their home in San Francisco in a predominantly Anglo-Saxon neighborhood. It was there in the city of diversity that he and my mother first experienced racism.
The neighborhood where my mother and father settled was in the outer Saint Francis Woods district. All of the neighbors were unfamiliar with the Greek culture. The fact that neither my mother nor my father spoke much English did not help matters. Each morning when my father would leave the house for work he would greet his neighbors with good morning, but he did not get a response. This rejection made him feel unaccepted by the neighborhood he and my mother chose to make their home.
My father was a well-educated man. With this education my father landed a position with PG & E. Even there the language barrier caused issues. Because my father was a resilient man he persevered and learned the English language on his own. Once he mastered the language life got a little easier. It was at this time my parents started their family. Eventually my father and mother had 5 sons. One by one the children entered the public school system and became part of the neighborhood. This started a healing process for not only my family but also the other families who got to know us.
This new found acceptance was welcomed and it was needed. The fact that my father worked hard was not enough to