I have never told this story to anyone but my husband and God, but I’m telling it now. I realized after the murders in Charleston last week that the dirty secret I’ve been keeping is a part of the problem.

For many years I was the director of a preschool and childcare center. Over those years I got to know a lot of people in a little town, which I was not originally from.

Shortly after my husband and I had adopted our precious, brown skinned boy, I went to a large social event with all the folks who considered themselves’ to be important in the town. Many of the parents whose children I had cared for and taught were there. I was standing with a group of men and women, all of whom I knew fairly well, when it happened.

The party had gotten quite jolly. There was laughter and joking all around. The mood was happy and light.

Then, a woman I knew well made the most vile, racial joke I could ever have imagined. The punchline was calling black children “nigglets.” Everyone laughed. They laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. A dozen people, who I had liked and respected, laughed at an evil joke about children of color.

I stood there, unable to speak. Her eyes met mine. The woman who told the joke was someone whose children I had cared for, and had helped to raise. I turned and walked away.

I had taken care of her children, and loved them like my own. She told a dirty, sickening joke about children like my precious-angel boy. It couldn’t really even be called a joke. It was a nasty, hateful, racial slur.

The solid ground beneath my feet cracked and shifted that night. Never again would I be under the illusion that this world is a safe place for my son to grow up in.

My child, so perfect and amazing and beautiful, was not a human child to her. He was a N***. And no one else objected.

I knew that it was a small, too-conservative, all-white town. But these people were church-goers and community leaders. They were educated in large, mid-western, public universities. I didn’t think they were like that. And here’s the kicker, the darkest, dirtiest part of it:

Many of these people were educators. The woman who made the despicable racial slur had a degree in child development and was the wife of a school principal. There were teachers in the group. They were shaping the next generation in the town. And they laughed at a sickening, dirty joke about children of color.

I’ve carried this within me as my own shame. As a stain on my soul. This happened and I did nothing but walk away. I think I’ve been as angry with myself since that night as I have been with that woman and the people who laughed along. I would give my life for my child, but I would not risk causing a scene at a party.

A few days after the party, a mutual friend came to me and said that the racist, joke-teller was worried that she had offended me. She told my friend that, “she shouldn’t have told that joke with Jane standing there.” But she expressed no remorse for telling the joke.

It’s been six years and I’ve grown stronger and bolder, but except for enrolling my son in a different school system, and disassociating from nearly everyone in that town, I’ve done nothing about my shameful secret. I can’t turn back time and confront her on the spot, as I have in my dreams. All I can do is to start telling the truth and to do things differently when it happens again. It will happen again.

There is poisonous racism among us, and I have been complicit by not speaking loudly against it. I have been too polite, and too afraid of conflict and rejection.

It’s time for me, for us, to speak it and name it, anywhere, anytime, to anyone who will listen. It’s time to take up this cross. As white Christians we are called to lift the weight of this burden from the backs of our black brothers and sisters. White Christians built this cross. We must stop keeping the dirty secret of racism in our communities, churches and families. It needs to come out into the light, where it may be confronted head on, until the day that it is eradicated. Thy Kingdom Come, to that small town and to our nation.