So this post gets a tad personal. It starts with a little story: several years ago, I was on a road trip with a friend of mine who is of East Asian descent (I’m white). While eating lunch at a travel plaza we started talking about our grandparents. I told him some stories about my granddad (may he rest in peace) and I couldn’t help but tell my friend—with a wince—that my grandpa was, well, kind of a racist, at least from what I saw.

In all earnestness my friend asked “how did you know?”

I had to process this question for a couple of seconds.

I asked my friend if he had ever met someone who just said blatant, forthrightly racist things on a semi-regular basis. He said no. That answer surprised me, but hey, praise God for it.

So I had to tell my friend, as best I could, how it works with the racist people that I’ve known: racist remarks, jokes, and rants just bubble out of them. It’s like they’re obsessed with racism. I told my friend how, when I was just a kid, my grandpa would tell me crude jokes that used the n-word. My grandpa would recount stories about how, according to him, Puerto Ricans were lazy. My grandpa once said, after reading an article about a civil rights issue in the newspaper, that “we paid black folks their nickel and dime back years ago.” And the last coherent thing my grandpa ever said to me—back when Obama was president—was “the President? He’s just another [n-word] from Chicago.”

But, as I told my friend over lunch, for all of my grandpa’s racist remarks, he was still my grandpa and I loved him. The man was steadfastly dependable and tender toward me. From the time I was little until into my mid-20s he would call on my birthday and sing me the birthday song over the phone. I would spend a whole week at his house in the country during summer breaks and we’d build bonfires, do target practice, and stargaze. I miss him a lot.

So it’s complicated, I said to my friend with a sigh. Wrapping up the whole bit about grandpa, I ruefully told my friend “so this is a thing that white people my age have to deal with: how do we process our grandparents’ racism?”

But as soon as I said that sentence my next thought was: why did I just say that? Because, dear white readers in your 30s, do we really really process our racist old relatives? Now, not everyone’s grandpa was throwing around the n-word with glee, I know. But I suspect that I’m not alone in having this kind of experience with one’s grandparents—not by a long shot.

Frequently, when this issue—the issue of “oh man, our grandparents were racists”—comes up in conversation among white folk the pattern of talking about it, from what I’ve seen, goes like this: someone, in a pained voice, relates some anecdote illustrating the racist thoughts of their grandparents. Another person, in a sad tone, admits that their grandparents had similar attitudes. Then someone says “it was a different era” and the conversation moves on.

The “it was a different era” summation never sits well with me. Saying that allows us in the here-and-now to feel distant from and superior to the attitudes of our predecessors. But are those attitudes so distant, really? Hopefully, in this momentous year, we white folk can all agree that racism isn’t a thing in the past—it’s around us in the here-and-now.

So here’s what I propose. It’s a simple thing, but I’m hoping it’s the type of simple thing that if repeated often enough starts some change in the right direction. White folk: next time you’re all to yourselves and the talk turns toward the “oh man—our grandparents were real racists!” topic, instead of closing the talk with “it was a different era,” how about segueing with “we got to do better than that.” The point of saying this would not be to judge or excuse the past—it would be to focus our attention on activity needed in the present. Because the world our grandparents made is still with us, and still needs to be remade. Our predecessors’ story is ours and we have to try to change the plot line through whatever means we have.