This essay focuses on whiteness was supreme and demanded.“ I got to a certain page and had to borrow someone else’s book because my pages
Some of those rules were: Never go to a white person’s front door — only the side. Always enter the town movie theater from the alley and sit only in the balcony. Do not exercise your right to vote. Send your children to the one-room school for Blacks with the hand-me-down books. “When I was taking algebra,” my father remembers, “I got to a certain page and had to borrow someone else’s book because my pages were torn out.”
The most important rule was that whiteness was supreme and demanded deference. My grandfather tipped his hat to white men and called them “Mr.” In return, they called him “’Lonzo,” for Alonzo. “White folks wouldn’t go to church with you when you were living,” Daddy says, but sometimes, “If they liked you, they might come to your funeral.”
Black people still have rules to survive the racist system that limits our liberty. Our lack of freedom looks different from that of our forefathers and mothers, but it is bondage just the same. I suggest you use these gender-neutral synonyms: forerunner, predecessor, ancestor, antecedent, and antecessor. Lastly, I should make note that the word “forefathers” can encompass both men and women. For example, the sentence “My forefathers originated from Africa” can describe the origin of both my female and male ancestors. It’s just that many times the word implies a relation to men, but not always. Therefore, the noun is not completely gender-neutral. Once again, from Merrian-Webster, the definition