This is exactly what Sung-hoon wants to do after meeting Yeoni his father’s girlfriend, but…he wasn’t counting on how hot she was or how committed she is to become a friend of his. This story appears in the Out in the Open episode "The Secret Lives of Parents".If your father brings home an older lady to present her to you as the stepmother, it’s quite normal to not be happy about the whole process. It’s also quite normal to dislike the woman that has entered your home. I had a deeper understanding of race and what it means to be a person of colour in America." But, you know, it's different when it's your history, when it's your family. about racial designations and what people of colour had endured. She also said her views on race have deepened through her research and personal experience. Lukasik says she now identifies as a mixed race woman or as a white woman with mixed race ancestry. And, then I thought, 'Wow, she was really courageous to have built a whole new life.'" Newfound familyĪfter divorcing Lukasik's grandmother, her maternal grandfather Azemar Frederic remarried and had kids. Lukasik eventually connected with his side of the family. "Once I understood the kind of stress she must have lived under, passing for white in a very white community, she must have been so anxious all the time about this, just so fearful. She also started learning more about what it might have been like for her mom growing up in the south, and why she decided to leave behind a part of her identity to pass as white. Lukasik has since come to interpret looking "good" to mean "looking white." "I said, 'Mom, why do you always wear a light foundation to bed?' And, she says, 'Well, Gail, you never know if you get sick in the middle of the night, and you have to call an ambulance, and they take you to the hospital, you will get better treatment if you look good.'" So there was bigotry, there were racial slurs in the household." Piecing together her mom's storyĪfter starting to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of her mom's life, Lukasik said that certain "quirks" began to make sense - like the fact that her mom always wore makeup to bed.Īs a teenager, she asked her mom about it one day. "My dad was a man of his generation and of his ethnicity. Lukasik says she doesn't think her dad ever knew the truth. "I think it's very interesting, on her 1940 census records that she is listed as 'NEG' which stands for 'Negro.' Four years later, she marries my white father, moves north, and is never listed as Negro again." Lukasik continued her research after her mother passed away and eventually wrote a book titled White Like Her. And, even though she tried to talk to her mom about it, about her life, her mom wouldn't budge. Lukasik kept her mom's secret for 17 years. "She looked at me and she said, 'You can never tell anyone until after I die.'" I watched her and it was almost as if she was shrinking. "I said, 'I have an official document from the State of Louisiana and it says you're coloured.' Well, it became very quiet in the room. It took two years until Lukasik felt she had an opportunity to confront her mother. "I feel a little bit betrayed by my mother, because why didn't she tell me this?" Facing the truth And so it's like finding out you're someone else. "I didn't know what to make of it, because I had lived my entire life to that point as a white woman, that was my identity.
When Lukasik received a copy, she saw the letters "COL" used to describe her mom, at the time a racial designation for "coloured." Thinking perhaps there was a mistake in the records, Lukasik pretended to be her mother and requested her mother's birth certificate from the State of Louisiana. So I sat there for a moment and I was stunned because I'm thinking, 'Does that mean I'm black?' - Gail Lukasik Behind every single Frederic name was the letter 'B.' And I had to go up to the head of that column and find out what it represented, and it said 'race,'" she told Out in the Open host Piya Chattopadhyay. It wasn't until later on in life, when she decided to comb through census records for her grandfather, Azemar Frederic, that Lukasik found out why. Why didn't her mom ever talk about him and why didn't she have any photos? Gail Lukasik was always curious about her mother's side of the family, particularly about her maternal grandfather. This story was originally published on August 24, 2018.
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