An old college friend living in Texas was traveling east and stopped for a visit. We hadn’t seen each other since graduation. It was many years ago.
We sat side-by-side in my family room and paged through our college yearbook, remarking on news of our classmates, giggling about our wacky hairstyles, etc. She had never seen the yearbook and I hadn’t looked at it in a long time.
I turned a page and gasped. The headline on the page was “Blacks.” There were photos of the African American students in our class. I was horrified.
I can’t breathe, said Eric Garner.
“Can you believe this?” I sputtered. “Why the segregation? And this was the liberal 70’s?”
My friend, who is African American, shrugged.
“It happens,” she said.
“But this is so offensive,” I persisted. “Why in the world …”
She sighed. “It is what it is,” she answered calmly. “You’ve just got to do your best and move on.”
The killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson had taken place just two weeks before. How was she processing this, I asked. What were her emotions?
She thought for a moment. There are things most white people can’t imagine, she told me. When black people walk into a store, she said, they are often eyed suspiciously by store clerks. White people cross the street to distance themselves from black people. The distrust, if not fear and hatred, is palpable.
My friend taught her son street smarts from an early age so he would know how to act around authority figures. Black mothers and fathers fear for their black sons. They teach them to be on guard, always.
She taught both her son and daughter that prejudice was something they would always face. A fact of life.
I can’t breathe, said Eric Garner. Eleven times he said this.
I listened to her stories with sadness. “Call me naïve,” I told her, “but this is so difficult to understand. After all these years since the civil rights movement, has anything changed?”
In fact, just that morning I had had an eye-opening experience. We have a wonderful dog groomer, Clinton, who comes to our house once a month to give Duncan the doggie spa treatment. As he was finishing up and checking his calendar for the following month’s appointment, he asked if he could come earlier than the usual 9:00.
“Of course,” I said, “we’re up early. Anytime is fine.”
He thanked me and explained that in the interest of getting to our house on time, he often left his home on the early end. If he arrived before 9, he parked about a block away and sat his idling car until it was time for the appointment.
“You wouldn’t believe the dirty looks I get,” he told me. “Some guy in a car circled the block to come back to stare a second time.”
Yes, Clinton is African American.
I can’t breathe, Eric Garner said, gasping for breath.
I was mortified. “Clinton, I am so sorry,” I said. “That is terrible. I can’t tell you how angry that makes me.”
Like my friend had, he shrugged. “It’s not just your neighborhood,” he said. “It happens.”
Thank you for this post. Your actions and words mimic exactly how I would have felt and what I would have said to my black friend. I have black relatives and we never have spoken of “racial profiling” or anything like that. I don’t know why not, but I’d love to get their perspective. It’s just not something that has come up in conversation. Your post prompts me to change that.
I hate that this is happening STILL in the U.S I, too, thought things had changed.
Apparently not.
Patricia Yager Delagrange recently posted…7 THINGS HAPPY PEOPLE DO DIFFERENTLY BY TAMARA STAR
Thank you so much, Patricia. These conversations must happen if we are to start to understand … and make change … we are all in this.
I want to say this is beautiful, Helene, but that is not the word I am searching for. It’s written beautifully, and its message loud and clear.
As a white person I can’t comprehend what an African American has to go through each day just to be safe and unharmed.
I can’t breathe, and we can’t breathe either, until this nonsense stops. I will never, ever understand this mindset. Never.
Cathy Chester recently posted…I Need Your Votes To Help Me Continue My Mission Of Ability Despite Disability
Thank you, Cathy. I know you are as outraged as I am.
Our empathy does take our breath away… This persistent fear and racial inequity is mind boggling…maybe I, too, am naive… It will change, I want to say, it will change if we–those of us who do not judge color or sexual preference or religious beliefs or intellectual ability–keep loving, keep treating others with kindness and respect… It HAS to change…
Glennon Melton says, Love wins… Let’s love even harder, Helene. Let’s keep giving your friend some modicum of hope… Tell her we’re here, Helene, tell her that she has neighbors of all shapes and sizes and colors…
Yours in hope, healing, and happiness…
~AE
Annah Elizabeth recently posted…Giving Thanks & Finding Gratitude with Buddha
That is beautiful, Annah, thank you. Like you, I thought change would have to come. I thought we had evolved to the point where it just didn’t make sense to not treat everyone equally. We have a long way to go.
I posted about the Ferguson/New York situations today, too. I’ve never been so embarrassed to not be a minority. Your words are so sad, and so true.
Andee Zomerman recently posted…Just Another Straight White Chick In the Burbs
Thank you, Andee, and thank you for writing about this. I will look forward to reading your post. Will our voices make a difference? I have to think that if our numbers are big enough we can make a change.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a parent of an African-American son and have to tell him what he needs to do in certain situations not to get shot.
Sometimes I think the only way this will change is when after many hundreds of inter-racial marriage and procreation, the future human population becomes a lovely shade of beige. But then, of course, we’ll find something else to use to divide us.
Good point, Janis, you may very well be right. Thank you for weighing in.
I am certainly hopeful that this is waking America up to the fact that racism is in our institutions,, social mores, and behaviors. Of course, whites just keep letting people go when it is a black person that is shot and killed. The truth is that it has been open season on young black men, and 42 isn’t old, since they were forced onto American soil. It makes me sick when I hear people talk about how America gives equal opportunity and is so exceptional. They only exceptional thing about America is our exceptional hypocrisy.
Sadly, I agree. If you deny the racism that is rampant in our world you are hiding your head in the sand. Racism is ingrained and pervasive.
As MKL said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I agree. I also agree with his statement, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
The only way this will stop happening is when good people, all of us, insist on change. Thank you Helene for speaking out about this! ~Kathy
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Thank you, Kathy, for your wise words. I would like to think that something good will come of this.
I’m feeling the same way Helene. It’s awful and has to stop.
Carpool Goddess recently posted…Day 30 of NaBloPoMo: I’m Done. Pooped. Kaput.
Awful, unacceptable, horrific … there are many ways to describe it but no one knows how to curtail it. So frustrating.
The whole thing is simply beyond belief. I’m so glad there are protests and people are getting angry. It’s time to do something.
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Why is this country so resistant to change? I thought after Sandy Hook we would have gun reform. Nothing changed. What does it take to make things right?
It is such a sad situation. I pray one day we can all live in peace.
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Me too, Mary.
These are the kinds of conversations we have to keep having and we have to be outraged and take action. I saw “Selma” today and was shocked to see that, despite having an African American President, we’re still fighting the same battles. Where is today’s Martin Luther King? It’s going to have to be all of us because it’s what’s happening is inexcusable.
Lois Alter Mark recently posted…d is for deal! $2 off great holiday gifts from l’oreal age perfect cell renewal
Why have we stagnated since those days? I don’t get it, Lois. It’s like the civil rights movement never happened.
It is so easy for us to go home, turn off the news, and not think about what is happening in the world. Good for you for writing this. I think it is so hard for us to understand because we don’t have to worry about getting pulled over for driving while black or be followed in the store just because of how we look. We do not have to be afraid for our children. We can use our voices, as you did so beautifully! Thank you dear Helene.
Thank you, dear Ruth. I would like to think that with our collective voices we can start to bring change … but didn’t that happen in the 60s? This is so frustrating.
It’s sickening and upsetting to see how little progress we have made.
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Completely. We should be way more enlightened at this point. Truly discouraging.
These things are tragic all the way around. I don’t understand it all.
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I don’t either.
Well said, Helene. It is hard to “see” prejudice unless you are the one being discriminated against. Sadly, racism is insidiously ingrained in the social fabric of America. We must stand up and speak out against the injustices that occur daily.
Pat recently posted…Birthdays, Deaths and Miracles
Indeed. It is our obligation as the majority to put ourselves in shoes that are not our own, and maybe not comfortable. But only then will we truly begin to understand. Thank you, Pat.
So shocking to know!! Yes, I too wonder if anything has really changed!
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It is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. If there is a light at all.
Helene,
I am a dear friend of Ruth Curran and Lois Alter Mark. Ruth sent me your blog post to read because she knows this is not only something I’m passionate about, it’s my life. I have been in an interracial marriage for 21 years. Thank you for writing this from your perspective. We need more voices that don’t live it but are trying to understand it and to be part of the change. Here is what I wrote on Facebook after the first grand jury verdict and then sadly I shared it again after the second:
“As a white woman, married to a black man, I have witnessed my husband have a gun placed to his head, handcuffed and told to get on the ground while the entire building we were coming out of was surrounded by police. All because he was a black man that shopped in a store that was previously held up by a black man that looked NOTHING like him. “Mistaken identity.” Really? I have seen him pulled over and questioned for no reason. I have listened to him come home upset because he was pulled over a block from our house and asked what he was doing in “this” neighborhood. I can go on. Tonight he didn’t watch the verdict because he KNEW what it would be. When a young, UNARMED black man can be shot and killed, (fight or no fight…he was unarmed)…our police have too much power and our system is broken and beyond. It can’t be okay for the police to be so overly aggressive, to surround buildings and put guns to the head of an innocent man, to shoot and kill a rowdy unarmed teenager, to never be held accountable. I am one white woman who doesn’t understand how this keeps happening and I am married to one black man who expects it. Tragic.”
All my best,
Amy Wise
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Oh my, Amy. I have tears in my eyes reading your post. I completely relate to this: “I am one white woman who doesn’t understand how this keeps happening and I am married to one black man who expects it.” That is precisely the way it is with my friend and me. As you say, this is tragic. Completely. Thank you so much for sharing your words.