Several days ago, seemingly out of nowhere, my mother asked me if I had been the victim of racial discrimination.

I blinked at her, ignoring the question and continuing to go about my business without saying so much as a word. When she persisted in asking, however, I finally replied, "What a ridiculous question."

She said, "So, yes?"

"Of course." I was disgusted.

But I didn't quite mean it in the way one would generally take the remark. Yes, I have been accused of all manner of terrible crimes on multiple occasions -- and while I don't think that the situations were entirely racially motivated, I do think that many of these situations might have been different if my skin were a different hue. I was detained a number of times during my undergraduate career so that campus police could verify that I was a student at the school. I understand that they were doing their job, and the police were generally friendly and even apologetic. Still, during those cold evenings in late autumn when I stood shivering outside the Morse gate while the cops read my student ID number into their walkie talkies and my fellow classmates passed through without incident, I was well aware that, if not for certain physical attributes, I might have been turning on reruns of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on the FX Channel in the comfort of my warm dorm room at the same moment in time.

On the whole, though, my experiences in this capacity haven't been nearly as overtly negative or memorable as the ones that have taken place in my own house. On a number of occasions during my upbringing -- especially in later years -- it seemed that Mom expected the color of my skin to define everything I did. Before taking me to anime conventions, my mother would snort and say, "I doubt you'll meet many black people there." When I dyed my hair blue, she retorted, "Ugh. How many black men do you see dyeing their hair?" (She also took to pounding on my door when I was in my room, screaming, "FAGGOT! YOU BLUE-HAIRED FAGGOT!!!" from the other side until her voice got too hoarse for her to continue and she had to take a break. In this, she was so relentless that after a week and a half I shaved my head completely just to regain some semblance of peace. I still recall that entire incident with a great deal of bitterness.) I once asked her to read a short story that I had written -- and upon doing so, she handed it back to me, saying, "This doesn't seem like something a black person would write." She has often sneered at me and asked me if I want to go on Montel or Maury Povich to discuss my apparent hatred for my race -- which, according to her, is indicated by my dislike of "black" television and "black" music. I was even criticized for watching "Buffy" because my mother regarded it as a "white" show.

Every time Mom learned that I had any female friends -- whether I noted a romantic interest in them or not -- her immediate response was almost always, "What race is she?" Never "What is she like?" or even "Tell me something about her." On the occasions when her question deviated from the norm, she instead spat, "Is she white?" When I started responding to her questions with my own -- "Why do you always ask that?" "What should that matter?" "Can't you ask about something else?" -- my mother has always responded with anger and invariably concluded her speeches with "...and I'm not the only person who thinks that way!" Inexplicably, when I was in the second grade -- and given that I cannot remember anything else about the incident, I think I must have remembered it because, like many of my mother's more reprehensible actions, she has boasted of them at later times -- my mother told me that if I married a "white" girl, she would refuse to attend the wedding.

Any time she makes reference to an unnamed person, my mother generally notes two and only two attributes about him or her -- the person's sex and the person's "race". (If the person is elderly, the person will receive the benefit of one more descriptor.) Though she appears to be capable of remaining civil with people of all purported ethnic backgrounds, it is markedly evident to me that she scrutinizes people with respect to the color of their skin and largely bases her impressions of them on that factor. (Admittedly, however, she probably gives almost as much consideration to the person's sex, at least when making more "involved" assessments of individuals.) On multiple occasions, she has remarked, "There don't seem to be many black people around here," when I have ridden with her to various local towns -- despite there being absolutely no people out on the streets -- meaning that she is peering into people's cars and paying careful attention to the skin color of the drivers. (Is this a common practice? I don't drive, but I think if I did the skin color of my fellow roadsters would be the least of my concerns.) Whereas I cannot ever recall Mom noting any of the positive qualities that she loved about my father, she has admitted to marrying him in large part because he was a "black" doctor -- and she has explicitly said that, all other things being the same but for his skin, she would never have considered marrying him at all. I recognize that certain attitudes may have been different thirty years ago and that my mother is quite obviously a product of her generation and environment, but that hardly excuses her behavior. To a certain extent, everyone that she has ever met during the course of her fifty plus years (or at least the ones during which she wasn't wailing in a diaper) has been a victim of racial discrimination.

Yet she had the audacity to ask me that question. Ostensibly, her reason for asking me whether I had been a victim of such discrimination was because that day's newspaper contained an article stating that persons who have experienced marked discrimination may exhibit symptoms of depression (I wonder why?) and she was looking for a simplistic way of explaining my apparent demeanor. However, when I pointed out -- at length -- that the most pronounced and obvious instances of discrimination that I have experienced have actually been enacted by her, she first looked away and began reading aloud from the coupon pages from Sunday's paper even as I continued to talk. After stopping and allowing me to finish, she wordlessly responded by raising her palm to me as if to say, "Talk to the hand, 'cause the face don't understand."

Insofar as I am depressed, the reasons for my disposition probably have a great deal to do with the active lessons Mom has taught me over the years.