J.C. Dade
Houston, TX
When I listened to the President of the United States speak of having being profiled because he was Black, I recalled the experiences that people had shared with me over the course of my lifetime as well as some of my own. My father often spoke of being pulled over on his way home from his sister’s house. His sister lived in Maryland and drove a nice car. When he would back through the country roads to his house, he would almost always get pulled over…never mind that his family owned a significant amount of acerage in the county. All the police saw was a black man driving a nice car at night. Nothing about that scenario could be good right?
As I write about that, I can virtually see the Internet comments exploding with people feeling that the police are justified. They go on and on about crime statistics and how the police are just doing their job. But my father wasn’t a criminal. He was driving his sister home in her car. Minding his business.
I remember in college a male friend accompanying me to the store. After a while he became extremely agitated. Then angry. He asked me to hurry along and said that when we got back to campus he would explain. When we got back to campus he began to explain how he was being followed around the store. Not long after we arrived, the store made an announcement…you know…Code Blah-blah, aisle 10… Almost immediately store clerks appeared in our area. They kept asking him if he needed help. The entire time we were in the store, clerks followed, watched and checked on us until we left. At the time I was mostly oblivious to this because at the time I was unfamiliar to the layout of the store and having trouble finding things. But I understood what he meant. This in a town where Russian immigrants are said to outnumber Blacks, black people were followed in the stores as though we were the only possible contributors to whatever crime happened in the vicinity. I understood what he meant because when I went back home and went into stores it happened to me too. I walked out of stores I had shopped in my entire life because clerks follwed me around as though I were stealing. When people became tired of being treated like that, that store lost business and it’s staff had to be replaced.
That being said, I get angry when I hear people say, “oh they played the race card.” My race is not a card (neither is my gender for that matter), and my life is not a game. When the quality of people’s lives and their ability to relas in their own environments is hampered by the someone else’s negative view of their race, life becomes challenged. It’s not in our heads. It’s a fact that these things are happening.
I grew up in Virginia in the 1980s, holding my breath while Richmond searched for the Briley Brothers, watching the Atlanta Child murders unfold in the news and reading about Bensonhurst in New York Magazine. At the time I didn’t understand that Bensonhurst was not a historical essay, that it was happening in real time. And I wouldn’t understand that people would continue to assume that they could feel justified in treating Black people however they wished because there were some criminals out there who happened to be Black. I did know that treating someone wrong because of their membership in a particular group was not a good thing. I knew because I had experienced some things. Racism hurts people. It hurts in the way it hurts when someone makes fun of you because of your nose, or your speech impediment or because your parents are poor or because you’re a woman or a man or any other targeted attack. It’s demoralizing. It’s harmful. And people should speak up when they’ve been attacked…and not just if that particular type of victimization is being protected. Don’t attack me because I’m black, blame me for the attack and then say, “you played the race card.”
When I was younger, was this notion that because we had made an end to segregation, that we had overcome and that America was somehow ‘becoming post-racial’. Looking back, that seems so naive. As an adult, it seems almost comical to suggest that this country will ever be post-racial, because as long as people have eyes to see, they will see and compare. It’s human nature. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I like a lot of things about my culture, just as I would espect others to respect and appreciate theirs. What’s awesome is when people can respect and celebrate those similarites and differences. When we don’t tell our friends and neighbors not to play with someone because they’re black (as someone did about me)…or white…or….whatever…
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