8. How to Ruin Thanksgiving
A relative of mine sent me a long email about how awful I was and how she was offended that I invited her to Thanksgiving dinner because of Native Americans and all. Ranting that I was white and she wouldn’t eat with me and the rest of my awful white family and I should have known better than to invite her. Just the day before she had called and told me she was looking forward to coming and bringing a couple of dishes to share.
It was my first time hosting and I got the email as my first guests arrived. We had all painstakingly made dishes that she could eat (she has some issues with food). I had spent hours making everything right so she wouldn’t find fault with anything, since she’s the type to find fault with everything.
So I’m taking a break from all the exhausting work and getting this email.
The doorbell rings and I’m doing my best pretending not to be upset in front of the other guests.
The email was just a litany of complaints–anything she thought would hurt me. She was so angry you could practically feel the rage through the screen. It just ended with a paragraph on how I am disgracing my ancestors and I’m disgustingly white.
The thing is, she’s white. We have Native American ancestry, but our family “passed” several generations ago and intermarried. She thinks she deserves full tribal benefits and I think she grew up with certain privileges off the reservation and she doesn’t have a right to claim benefits without the struggle (we had never discussed this prior to the thanksgiving debacle).