Rush to Judgement

When he approached me he stuck all the right chords. He had a hesitance to his step that I interpreted as an awareness of his black maleness. He walked up to me, but not too close. He stayed on the opposite side of my car from where I stood and spoke softly. My heart ached because I recognized the cautious posture of a black man approaching a stranger, it screamed, “don’t be alarmed, I’m not a threat.”

And so I stopped what I was doing and smiled slightly and nodded just a bit in his direction. And he began.

“My daughter was killed last week. We are stuck here and need $12 to get…”

I don’t remember where he was trying to go. Maybe he never said. Maybe I was already sold. Working in violence prevention work where weekly staff attend funerals or visit patients at their hospital bedsides. 

“If you tell me which one of these mailboxes is yours I’ll return the money there.”

I rustled through my purse and came up with a twenty dollar bill.

“Which one is yours?” he asked, pointing to the row of mailboxes.

“Don’t worry about it,” I responded. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

That was more than a month ago. And the memory of it stayed with me for a long time. The bare bones of the story he told me mingling with the wisps of stories from my work. It lent a heaviness to me for a few days because a father had to scour the streets of Oakland to find $12 to get himself and his family…wherever they were trying to go.

A lot has happened since then. His family, right or wrong, no longer dominates my thoughts when I pull up to my apartment. But a few weeks ago, flustered in my morning routine because I was late for work, a familiar sight unfolded. A man approached me with the cautious posture of a black man who wants to be sure the person he is approaching knows he means no harm.

“Do you know the manager ?”

“what manager?” I was impatient. I was already late and he seemed to be meandering around his point. I did not smile. I was not encouraging. I am not proud of this.

"The manager here," he pointed vaguely. Was he indicating my apartment, one of the many beyond it? "What do you need, I'm late." My voice was stern.

"My daughter died and I need money to..."
I stopped him mid-sentence. Unwilling to hear what he had to say any further. "You don't remember me. I gave you money last time you asked for the exact same reason." He looked at me and tried again.

I cut him off. "I have to go." I got in the car and sped off toward work. Sped off to a building that represents grieving families in need of things... help with applications, shoulders for crying,  money for burials.

In my haste I wasn't sure who that man was. I assumed the worst. Cast over my crappy morning, he became a scammer playing off my sympathies and I became a chump suckered out of $20. All I could see was the abstraction of faces of legitimate need in the shadow of what I perceived as his greed. What kind of person impersonates a grieving father?

Maybe nobody. Maybe he was still a grieving father. Maybe he was still in need of $12. Maybe I rushed through and over a man who needed at most a few bucks and at the very least a kind face or gentle voice to send him on his way.

As soon as I rounded the corner and headed for the freeway, my feelings collided. Anger crashed against disgust...anger that it might all be an act, disgust at myself for assuming it was. Given the work that I do, where was my compassion? How did I react so horribly?

Growing up my dad always told me I couldn't control what other people said or did, only how I responded. If I wondered if someone said something with malicious intent he urged me to take it in the best light - less harm comes from that he explained. I wish I had embodied that credo standing by my car, late to work, with a man's expressed grief on display. I didn't. And there is no rectifying that.