U-HAUL

Even as I write I have second thoughts about doing this, but believe that to document, is the action necessary for relief and one way to engage the 800 pound gorilla in the room, which is race. The purpose of this blog is not to imply that I have a problem being Afro American, or for sympathy. It is to state the often times painfully obvious which is, sometimes, the problem is in being afro American. The problem in many of my pedestrian encounters with people whether consciously or unconsciously, is that I am an African American, and not living up to or down to the expectations of that. Expectations which dominate their psyche and sometimes rule outcomes, in a wide variety of situations. Therefore in my encounters I strive to be free from a context imposed on me which is anything other than inviting, but is also unknown until the encounter begins. Sometimes race is not a factor and the incidental contact with people goes off without a hitch. But sometimes it is and then I am frozen in my tracks.

For most of my life I ignored details of events similar to the ones contained in this writing, and that was wrong. I am unable to further convince myself that it doesn’t matter. It does. With each additional decision to suffer racism in silence, I take a little more away from myself and my family and it undermines the hard work of this and previous generations put fourth to recover from generations of slavery, Jim Crow and other atrocities, and into being happy, solid, citizens.

Whenever I think of my responsibility to that legacy, within the context of role model, teacher and protector of my children, it is clear, that to support their healthy expectations from the world is tantamount to their emotional and psychological health within society, and if I can’t support my own healthy expectations, in that regard, then I cannot support theirs and they will suffer like me and my parents and my grandparents and my great grandparents and the rest of my ancestors, at the hands of racism.

I picked my children up from school and was on my way home. I was traveling East on west ninety something street when I encountered a U-haul (24 footer) backing West, down the street from Broadway. There was a young Latino looking out, directing the truck. I slowed down and came to a halt when I approached this in progress. Where I stopped was not yet parallel to the parking space the truck was trying to pull into, the young Latino man came over to my mini van, knocking on my window to direct me as well. I could see that I was not close enough to interfere with the truck or with what they were doing. He was adamant about me moving back some more. I rolled my window down and asked that he keep his attention on his truck and that I could handle things from my end. He decided to make it a challenge to his authority, repeating over and over again, “you can handle things from your end! You can handle things from your end!” Then he instructed his truck to stop moving into the parking space and remain frozen, awkwardly double parked. I can only assume he wanted me blocked in as payback and thought there wasn’t enough room for me to pass when he decided to abandon his plans to park. It was illuminating when he decided not to park, making off- loading his truck easier, but also that by not parking he would somehow hurt me.

It was the kind of intolerance I have known all my life. I dropped my head, reflecting on this. He was not an old white man, or some young uninformed or well informed white kid, not some driving Miss Daisy white woman nor plain white woman pretending to be better. This was a Latino, a group bludgeoned historically side by side with African Americans, a young “police profile eligible” one too. I don’t discount because of age either. I looked at the space between the truck and the parked cars to my right. I knew I would make it but he was sure I wouldn’t. Isn’t that ironic, one oppressed group praying for the failure of another.

What is important here is not that I could have backed up and followed all of his instructions, thereby making him happy and living up to his expectations, but the intolerance of my position, like there was something wrong with having a position different from his, or, maybe I wasn’t entitled to a position and that now I would be punished for violating his expectations and choosing a position, and that is how racism operates.

It’s a slow erosion of human rights and indigenous beliefs. For victims it’s a quick descent into self hatred and replication of this same intolerance on other African Americans, or non whites. For perpetrators it’s teaching us our new place, if you are still too young to understand, and teaching the not so young to remain in the old place of silence and compliance they have grown accustomed to, since we no longer talk about race in the terms affecting us the most, our daily lives. We talk about race in a historical sense, like it’s all gone now. Clearly my experience suggests it hasn’t gone anywhere.