I hadn’t called my mom in several weeks. The truth is that I really dislike calling her because we never have anything that is truly substantive to say to each other. We check in on things like health, my work, Kaia, and then… that’s it. The conversation rarely lasts more than five minutes. But it’s five minutes of inanity that I always feel either bored or annoyed by.

When I think back to all the conversations I’ve had and enjoyed with friends’ parents who I respect, with former teachers who I keep in touch with, with people who are a generation or so ahead of me, the conversations were always so fun and thought provoking because there was some semblance of an intellectual exchange, a discussion of ideas. On their part, they always treated me like my opinions mattered, like the things I was learning about and sharing with them were fascinating to them. They made it seem like they also had something they could learn — from me. I never felt like I was being spoken down to, as though my thoughts, opinions, or knowledge were lesser than simply because I was younger. But that’s generally how my parents, and especially my mom, make me feel on the majority of conversation topics. And the most ridiculous thing is: my mom is not educated, worldly, well traveled, or well read. If you gave her a copy of a world map and asked her to identify where the continent of Europe was or even where her home country of Vietnam was, she wouldn’t be able to answer the question. Yet somehow, she always insists she knows more about pretty much *everything* than me simply because she is older and “has wisdom.”

My mom is a Vietnamese American woman, born into a family as the youngest of ten children who was never wanted because she was the youngest and a girl. Because she was a girl, she was seen as worthless. Her mom (her dad died when she was 6) refused to pay for an education for her. She experienced the terrors and pains of the American (Vietnam War), married into a Chinese American family where the matriarch oppressed her and made her feel ashamed for being Vietnamese, and then experienced endless racism, sexism, and classism at her office job, which gave no opportunity for growth, for 26 years. So, while I do not agree with my mom’s internalized sexism and racism, I see where it all stems from. She has experienced so much hatred and oppression from White people who are “above” her on this so-called race ladder that she eagerly delights in putting down anyone “below her” on said ladder who is Black or Brown.

After talking about a bunch of nothing on Tuesday when I called her, she asked me, point blank, if I voted for Trump. “Why would I vote for an incompetent, racist convicted felon?” I responded.

“Why would you vote for that idiot Black lady and not Trump?” she retorted back. My mom doesn’t vote and has never cast a single vote in her entire time being American. And frankly, given how little she knows, it may actually be better she does not vote.

“You know, she’s not an idiot. And why do you have to be so racist and call her an ‘idiot Black lady’?” I said back, as calmly as I could.

“Why can’t I call the Black lady an ‘idiot Black lady?” my mom cackled back. “She’s an idiot Black. She’s stupid. She does no good! She has no face now. NO FACE! What is she going to do now? Nothing! Trump won because he’s better than her! Who wants a Black running this country?”

I have oftentimes thought about the things I would say to my parents if I truly, truly wanted to cut off all contact with them and go nuclear. And in this context, what I would have loved to have said, but refrained from and simply told her that this conversation was done and hung up, was this:

“At least ‘that Black lady’ never drove any of her (step)children to suicide like you did. You are really the one with no face.”

I may not have said it, but I mean every word of that statement.