No white person can ever truly know what it means to be a person of color. Our white skin protects us from the indignities even Black celebrities face on a daily basis—an empty cab driving by without stopping, someone following us through a store (well, actually I have been followed through Hobby Lobby for wearing a pentacle), being treated like a third class human being. But we can listen and observe, and we can learn.
I am about as white as it gets. I’m an Irish redhead, and I burn if I stand outside for fifteen minutes in summer. When I lived in Japan, I used parasols and hats to avoid sunburn, having learned those tricks from Japanese friends. I’ve spent most of my 65 years in the NE or Japan (7 years), but 2o of it was lived in Miami in the 50s and in North Florida and Georgia. But experience has taught me that I live in a different world than an African-American woman my age.
When we lived in Jacksonville, I was a librarian for Jacksonville Public Library, and many of my co-workers were Black. And I had an eye-opening experience. One of our senior clerks was handsome young man named Anthony. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had played football in high school. Big guy, but soft-spoken and gentle with a wild sense of humor. I got to know him because he worked the same two nights of the week I did. He and my husband would cut up together on the nights my husband would drive me to and from the library.
One day, Anthony’s wife called our branch manager to tell him Anthony would be late that morning. He was in jail. He wouldn’t be in until they called to check his alibi and finally released him.3had just gotten out of jail and still had to shower and change clothes. Mr Brown, the branch honcho, was furious, practically frothing at the mouth. It seemed Anthony had gotten home from work the previous night, parked his car, changed into jeans and a Tee shirt and decided he wanted a beer. Since the grocery store was all of three block away, he decided to walk it. He never got the beer.
About a black away from home, he was arrested by police on suspicion of robbing a liquor store. Anthony asked when it had happened. They told him the robbery was at 5:30. He heaved a sigh of relief, because he had still been at work. One phone call would clear him.
The police (both white) didn’t care. They took him to the station, did the whole procedure including a mug shot, and didn’t bother to make the call until the next morning—after his wife had called us. No, he wasn’t charged with anything. Yes, he was released. But I was wrathy, which is an Irish term for so angry that I was incoherent. I mean, this was Anthony, someone I liked and had invited to my home. He was always neatly dressed. He was unfailingly polite to even the rudest patrons. How could this have happened to him.
It was the first time I understood that you could be arrested just for Walking While Black (okay, I was naïve; I admit it). When Anthony finally got in, I gave him a hig and apologized for the police. He just shrugged.
What upset me even more was when of our student part-timers who shelved books and helped out at the desk cornered me in the break room. Helen was an elegant young Black woman who was finishing up her degree in elementary education. She had mahoghany skin and a bone structure Naomi Campbell would envy; even better she had a sense of humor.
She looked at me and said simply, “Thank you.”
I looked up from my sandwich. “For what?”
She said softly, “For being angry at the police over Anthony and for apologizing to him. I’ve never heard a white person apologize to a white man for something like that.”
My heart hurt for that. It was just wrong.
And I remembered my childhood 5 years of it spent in Miami in the late 50s. I remembered seeing the “Whites Only” signs on bathrooms and fountains, and asking my Mother what it meant. Her answr had been simple: “Some people think white skin makes them better. It doesn’t. In their case, it makes them ignorant and cruel.” So I told Helen what my mother had said and apologized again for people like that.
Thirty years later, m husband who had grown up in the segregated South, had a conversation with the family across the street. They had a wonderful son who, as kid, looked a little like a pudgy Cosby kid and who had grown into a handsome young teenager. When Trayvon Martin was shot, all I could think was that it could have been Sonny. Anwa, the pair of hem were talking about something—likely the stupidity of Congress—and out of nowhere Greg said”You talk to me like I’m just a person.”
Ben knew what he mean, what was unspoken, but replied, “Are you telling me you’re an alien? What planet?”
And they went back to laughing.
That is how it should be. But it isn’t. I am pretty sure Greg had had to have The Talk with Sonny about how to behave if stopped by the police. A talk O ONE on eve family should have to have with their children—but every family needs to have.
Justice is not blind. It judges you by the color of your skin and the economic and social status. My blond nephew was arrested for underage drinking and DUI. He;d been drinking. His friend had a bottle of illegal oxycontin on him, so he was in worse shape. My nephew sat in jail for TEN DAYS before he got a bail hearing. I can garantee you he’d have been out the same night or early the next day, if his Dad been someone who had gone to school with my husbnd—someone whose Dad was well-known lawyer and whose grandfather was a retired judge and who has more money than God. But my BiL is just a working class guy who couldn’t pull any strings.
The situation in Ferguson, so soon on the heels of NY cops murdering a man for the “crime” of selling single cigarettes, has had me screaming like a banshee at the TV over some of the comments Chief Jackson had made. I wanted to slap the governor silly for labeling the righteous and justified anger of the African-American community in Ferguson as “angst”—which what teenagers suffer from when their parents won’t let them got to the midnight showing of the new Hunger Games movie. The only bright spot has been Captain Ron Johnson, whose calm and caring presence has impressed the hell out of me. His speech today was both moving and brilliant; it reminded me of Obama’s keynote speech in 2004. He has a compelling charisma and I hope like hell he runs for higher office. Congress needs men like him. The F.B.I. needs someone like him.
I wish I knew how to solve this problem of an increasingly militarized police who see the citizens who pay their salary as threats rather than those they are supposed to protect and serve. Those shiny new toys those pisspoorly trained cops were playing—APCs, sniper rifles, etc—should be in the hands of the Guard and the State Police. These bumblers have no clue as to how to handle anything more serious than a bar brawl. I also feel strongly that if we are ever to have true community policing, the police must be drawn from the community iin which they serve. That means the police force must truly represent that community. If you’re working in a predominantly African-American neighborhood, the police should be drawn from that community, rather than a white guiy who lives in a nice white suburb. Any and all complaints need to be investigated by an outside body, with a copy of the complaint and the panel of the panel’s decision in his permanent record. , which is NOT how this is handled in Ferguson.
Never again. Never again do I want an unarmed African-American dying for no reason. No one should die for shoplifting a handful of cigars. I a, so afraid I’ll turn on the news and hear that the ex-cop who still lives in subdivision where our foreclosed house has gunned down Sonny for walking in the middle of the street with his friends and wearing a hoody—because I can see it happen all too easily.
It is time for us all to stand up and scream at the top of our lungs, “Never again.”
NO ONE should die for a handful of cigars.