Lim DePriest and Joyce Elizabeth Norman
Here is that conversation about race that needs to transpire. And it goes like this: a black woman grows up in the segregated south and moves to Chicago becoming successful in the corporate world then retires and decides to substitute teach. There she meets a white woman around her age who grew up far north in Minnesota. From one end of the Mississippi River to the other, they have seen so many changes in their lives. They talk about their marriages (6 together) their lives, and the topic of diversity. They like to laugh in their discussions—maybe cry a little. So here you have it: a book that discusses what race has to do with growing up and developing friendship and love in our society: Growing up Ebony and Ivory.
Lim DePriest a graduate of Mundelein College in Chicago, Illinois where she studied business, humanities and psychology. She is also a trained facilitator of diversity and coaching. She and her husband, Robert, live in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
Joyce Elizabeth Norman, author of The Colors of Dreams, conducts workshops in poetry and prose after retiring from thirty-five of teaching high school in Iowa and Buffalo Grove, Illinois. She lives with her husband, Charlie in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago.
Meet Ebony and Ivory—two fun-loving women, who really believe that they have lived, fulfilled lives. Well, our names aren’t really Ebony and Ivory—they are Lim DePriest and Joyce Norman both in our 60’s. But we are fun loving—and we stay young by laughing a lot. Lim retired from Corporate America, and is now working as a teacher. Joyce retired from teaching and is now embarking on a writing career with her friend Lim. This book will tell you about our conversation about race through our upbringing, our multiple marriages, our friendship and our experiences in womanhood. We like to think that we stay young. How do we stay young you ask? We keep open minds, we stay active, we use creams, we make love—and did we mention the laughing?
But not all of our collected experiences are happy and joyful. Lim grew up in the Jim Crow South. Both of us were separated from our sons for a time. Both of us have lost our dads. Both of us experience negativity in our lives. What we want to talk about though is what makes us hopeful, how we think life can always improve.
Recently Barack Obama garnered the number of delegates necessary to win the Democratic nomination through the primary system. Earlier in the primary he spoke to the nation about a relationship with a pastor in his church—Reverend Wright, the minister who married him and baptized his two daughters. It seems that a large number of people had played videos on You Tube that reported what many thought were inflammatory lines from Reverend Wright’s sermons. So Barrack had to decide: Should he forget that the minister said those things—essentially ignore him? Should he disavow him? No he said, he could not disavow him, as he could not disavow the racist things that his white grandmother said. Now I realize that he did need to disavow his pastor later. But it was the understanding of people’s beliefs about race that Lim and I found so astounding. He was able to approach the topic of race in a reasonable and rational manner. At the same time he approached the topic with personal stories.
But the notion of racial relationship is more than just the way people refer to each other. It’s also the way we all judge others. Prejudice is simply judging others before you get to know them. And the question is how to avoid judging others before we meet. Talk to them, get to know them?
Lim and I believe that the best way to go beyond these kinds of statements is to discuss what is said: to address others, to tell each other stories about our lives. Sometimes those stories make us laugh and sometimes cry—but really talk about differences and find similarities in our lives. Differences in people are a reality. Has the United States of American gone beyond racism? No. So how should we address it? The same questions that Barack discussed. We should not ignore it. We should not disavow it. We should talk about it.
We are two women in their sixties who live in the suburbs of Chicago, Ebony and Ivory, and we have had that discussion. About race. About our differences in background. About what separates us and what pulls us together is looking at our perspective backgrounds, our training, our beliefs—we want to address those things that makes us what we are. We want to celebrate those things, to talk about those things, and perhaps uncover the humanity of what comprises the differences and similarities in our race. We want to address this humanity.
