Driving While B(l)ack in America

“By yourself?” is the most frequent question I get about my 2019 travels. More than “how much did it cost?” or even “what countries did you visit?” People seem fixated on the alone part. The part I don’t think much about.

It isn’t that I haven’t experienced dangerous situations in my travels, or that nothing bad has happened to me, just that I don’t equate those things with the solitary nature of my travels. Bad things happen every day to people alone and in groups. Misfortune is not tethered to folks walking through life alone. So my worries when I travel, my stresses, are mostly the same as the ones I have in America.

One thing I didn’t worry much about in my travels was interactions with the police. But that was there, this is America and police interactions are a different breed of

Staring at what I thought was a low hanging orange moon in the distance, I ran a stop-sign I've stopped at a million times. When I saw the flashing lights I was genuinely confused. I wasn’t up to speed yet. I had swerved a little wide getting in my lane but that didn’t feel excessive.

Mind racing, I put on my blinker and headed to the curb. I fumbled with my radio, started to reach for my purse, then remembered I’m Black and in America and rolled down my window, turned off the car and put my hands at 10 and 2.

My heart raced.

The last time I was pulled over I was in Oakland and got a $300 ticket for dropping someone off at the bus stop of a BART station (no good deed goes unpunished). The cop was as gracious as anyone handing you a $300 bill can be but that was before the spate of recorded black deaths at the hands of police officers so fear wasn’t at the forefront of my mind at that time. I think it was even before Oscar Grant’s murder was preserved in grainy phone video that was cutting edge at the time.

It has been so long since I’ve bee pulled over that I didn’t anticipate how fearful I would feel when I saw the flashing lights and prepared for what should be a routine interaction. Only it didn’t feel routine. It felt fraught.

To be clear, neither cop was rude to me – but there were two of them. The first approached as I'd expected, the second one walked up a few minutes into the stop, knocked lightly on the passenger window, and asked to lower it so he could inspect my car.

No one yelled at me, asked intrusive questions, and I drove away with only a warning.

Still, my heart raced in my chest as I accelerated away from the curb and merged left to enter the freeway. My mind raced, listing all of the things I forgot to do. I hadn’t put on my hazards, I hadn’t thought to record the interaction. If this had gone differently there was nothing to show how accommodating I was, how quickly I complied with requests, how formal my posture.

Sitting on my bed at 2:15 am, my mind still racing, I can’t believe those are the things I focused on...only I can believe it. And it is the ease with which I have slunk back into this very specific American reality that frightens me.

I shouldn’t have run the stop sign, but I shouldn’t fear for my life when being reprimanded for it.

Note: This happened back in early January and I just never posted. This fear hasn't receded.

So Much the Same: no justice and no peace

My grandfather died last week. 

He lived as colored and negro before he was ever granted black or African American. A world war two veteran, he risked his life for America only to return to its abuses. Somehow he survived. Somehow he thrived. Sent his three children to college, traveled the world, lived just two months shy of 100 years.

I find that last bit the most remarkable. 

Ninety-nine years in America is a long time for a black man. Hell, 12 is a ripe old age for a black man in America, I say with every ounce of irony I can conjure.

Years ago I had a conversation about the ills of racism in America with PaPa. He was adamant that I focus on how far we have come. He pointed out that the descriptors on my birth certificate mark some level of change, of progress.“Does that mean we should stop?” I asked him.  “If no one is flinging ‘nigger’ at me does that mean I should be satisfied?”

He stopped for a moment. Looked at me and then shook his head. No. No we shouldn’t stop. 

For some reason my grandfather, my PaPa, is running through my head as I am waiting for BART to arrive, coming to the end of an 8-day trip book-ended by my PaPa’s funeral in Houston on one end and a conference in Philadelphia on the other.

My thoughts are heavy. It could be exhaustion or maybe reflecting on my grandfather’s journey through life provides the perfect canvas to paint all my grief all my loss, both personal and social.

Us gunned down in the street by agents of the state requires deliberation and evidence before the loss of life can be deemed tragic or unjustified by the American masses. Video isn’t enough, we need sound. We are guilty until proven innocent…guilty of what I am unsure.

I hopped online when my plane landed and Twitter, awash in RIP hashtags and outrage and mourning, brought me to tears. Just like that. Visions of every black and brown person I’ve ever loved swim before me because our lives are clearly viewed as disposable.

Maybe its our melanin. Maybe it is the visible proof of the enslavement written epigenetically in all of our progeny. Yeah, maybe we are a reminder of America's original sins of genocide and torture and it just can’t bare it, just won’t. America has to wash us out Lady Macbeth style- damn spots that we are.

I thought I was out of tears for all of this. Cried out when Zimmerman was released into the wild like some poisonous gas. But there have been so many…so many more. So many that the names begin to jumble and the timeline is a mess in my head because we are daily targets and nothing, not body cameras or being a child or respectability politics that demand we comply with raised hands, saves us. Our black and brown bodies are shot over and over and over again. 

And like entertainment, like the lynching postcards of old, those bodies are displayed on a loop. A warning. This is what I can do boy/gal. This is what you are worth. This is how little America cares.

I can’t bring myself to ask right now…can’t bring myself to beg for America to stop murdering us. It seems insane to beg for my humanity from the very thing stripping it daily.But yesterday my friend of 22 years, my 6'2 brown skinned brother, drove 2 hours to see me, to share a meal. And we laughed and we debated and we reminisced. And then he got into a car and drove two hours home through the dark Pennsylvania and Maryland night with only a thin layer of metal and wisp of grace to see him safely home. 

And for him I asked. For him and every person I love that has been kissed by some variant of brown I will continue to ask…please stop. Please stop killing us. Please. Stop.

At church on Saturday we celebrated my PaPa’s long life. We shared stories of his driving on long road trips and ability to eat any meal no matter ow horribly prepared. We marveled at how much the world has changed in the hyphen he lived between 1916 – 2016. He carried a computer in his pocket and waved at his granddaughter in Uganda through Skype. 

All that and the thing that strikes me the most as I arrange my thinking to a world that no longer includes him, is not all of the changes he experienced, but how black people’s place in it has stayed so very much the same.

A hand on my knee

When he placed his hand firmly on my knee for the second time, after my skillful maneuvering to remove it only moments before, I had an inkling that things were not going to end well. The little boy that had been relegated to the flatbed portion of the truck despite plenty of room in the cabin was no longer a buffer and we…we were driving through the bush far off the clay-packed ruts that passed for a road. 

The driver stopped the truck, the suddenness of it jerking me forward in my seat, and told me he couldn’t take me the rest of the way. More angry than scared in that moment, with the thorny bushes poking through my skirt and the sun beating down on my head, I cursed him. I cursed him as I walked several kilometers to the school I was visiting nestled in the hill I’d been deposited on.

Earlier, when he had stopped to ask me if I needed a ride, he seemed vaguely familiar. He was someone from the expansive village that was to be my Peace Corps home for two years. That he recognized me immediately was no surprise, everyone knew me - not-quite-leghowa (white person/foreigner) but definitely not local- I was destined to be known and  to never know everyone. 

When he'd slowed down and pointed out the shops he owned in the village, smiled and acknowledged my host family, and then offered me a ride, I jumped at the chance to shorten my commute and get to know someone from my community better. The cutie in the front seat, staring in the curious way all of the children in the village stared at me, sealed the deal. 

Never mind in America I would never climb in a strange man’s car, small child present or not, in the village context it seemed reasonable. And so I tried to skootch the little one over only to hear him directed to the back of the truck. 

Now we were two. 

The story could have ended so much worse. Rather than walking through the bush with no trail to guide me and arriving late to the school, I could not have arrived at all. 

Rage welled up in me, not fear, although in the coming months the incident would feed my fear. 

Being female has always made me …aware. Wherever I am in the world I understand that there are certain vulnerabilities both real and perceived. I maneuver the world with this in mind; not necessarily at the forefront of my mind but definitely there.

In the early months of my time in South Africa, my vulnerabilities  almost drove me home. More than homesickness and limited resources (no electricity or running water) fear crept into my mind in tiny increments and then with blurring speed. 

Everything in South Africa was new to me. I was fascinated by the newness. Like a small child waving hello to everyone and everything, I wanted to experience my surroundings. Coupled with the fact that while I am a black woman, nothing about me announced me as anything but foreign. So I drew attention. Children stared, women asked if I was a missionary or a student (I always had a book with me), and men proposed. This was my reality on foot, on khumbis (minivan taxis), at the market,  at the local police station.

Even after the newness factor wore itself to normalcy for me, I was still an anomaly in the village, on local transpiration, wherever I went. Reading was often interrupted by questions. Where are you from? Why are you here? What religion are you? Are you married? People greeted me constantly- partly because greeting is a cultural norm and partly because everyone remembers the random leghowa in the village. Everyone remembers and so people were offended if I didn’t remember them form a khumbi ride 6 months ago in a different city. 

There were a lot of questions an comments bred from curiosity and then there was harassment.

Marriage proposals from complete strangers started off funny, I assumed they were excuses to speak to me. But sometimes they weren’t jokes and laughter or a “no thank you” inspired hostility and entitlement. My American-ness posed its own problems. The common assumption about American women is that we are promiscuous. Coupled with the absence of family, I was untethered. I was a sexual object outside the accepted cultural norms of behavior. 

The absence of tethering made it possible for the police at my local police station, to feel me up when I arrived to introduce myself as a safety measure- the irony was not lost on me. That interaction with the police prevented me from calling for help when a khumbi driver in Louis Trichardt felt me up, running his hands from my torso beside my breasts and down to my legs. Those things are what stopped me from doing anything but freezing up inside when a man I met at the Reed Dance Ceremony in Swaziland extended a handshake too long and circled his finger in my palm, refusing to release it, in a common if adolescent request for sex.

Getting banished from the truck in the middle of the bush happened before I experienced most of those other things; back when everything, including harassment, was still new to me. So it didn’t scare me, not the way it scared the teachers at my school I was going to visit. Of course they were scared for different reasons. They were fearful for the American in me. Fearful that I would lose my way or stumble and fall in the bush. Fearful that my delicate Western ways would falter under African conditions. No one mentioned a man’s hand on my knee and neither did I.

About six months into my life in South Africa, with almost two more years before me, I contemplated coming home. 

Sitting on the khumbi in Petersburg, waiting for it to fill and begin the journey back to my village, a man sat beside me and attempted to strike up conversation. I kept my head bowed, pretended to read, pretended to be deaf and unable to feel his hand tapping me lightly on the shoulder. Two hours later, on the last leg of my journey home I relaxed a little. And in relaxing, I realized that same man was on this khumbi. Realized he was someone from my village. Realized he had only been trying to say hello and I had treated him like a ghost – invisible and unwanted. 

Fear had driven me so far from myself, so far from the reason I travel. How could I experience a country if I couldn’t or wouldn’t experience the people? And of course, how do you experience people if you are too wrapped up in fear?

With time I figured out how to navigate my fear. Figured out how to tether myself to my host-family, how to use humor as deflection, how to weave myself into cultural norms instead of floating outside of them. I made friends. I asked questions. I trusted my gut. With time the fear receded into memories, but not the strongest memories of my time in South Africa. Not stronger than Hunadi giving me a bowl filled with homemade biltong when she learned I didn't have any meat at my house, or Naniki sliding through the fence to discuss books, or Mr. Mokopo making me dinner. Not more than my host-mother sticking her finger in my hand-whipped lemon meringue pie to assure me it wasn't cooked yet (it was), or Magajedi laughing at me as I stood on a chair crying about the rat she'd purposely trapped in the kitchen with us.

Fear, like that man’s hand on my knee, was pushed aside and I was left to chart my own path forward.

DailyPost prompt: Safety First

I won't miss the Cosby Show

I don’t listen to R Kelley. Even on the radio. It is my silent protest against a pedophile. Avoiding Michael Jackson is more difficult. He is an institution to most Americans and beyond reproach…at least people seem to think he is beyond reproach. Woody Allen is easier for me, I don’t like him and don’t have any inclination to watch his movies and I wouldn’t know Roman Polanski if he slapped me on the butt and called me sweetheart. 

All of those men have the horrible distinction of being accused (and widely believed), if not convicted, of being sexual abusers/rapists of some kind. And with their lack of convictions trailing behind them, and their “genius” pushed out in front of them, there has been an extended debate about whether their personal lives should detract from their artistic ones.

One of my oldest friends asked me about Bill Cosby today. My immediate answer was that he’s a rapist asshole and I followed that by acknowledging that we, societally, support rape culture. We are so busy fretting about Bill Cosby’s legacy and discussing the impact his greatness has had on comedy and television and black people…I wonder who the hell is worrying about the impact his raping has had on his victims.

While I don’t believe a person is only the worst thing that they have done, I am conflicted when the worst thing you have done leaves a string of traumatized victims in your wake while you were able to bask in money and fame. Absolution of those crimes because of money and fame seems despicable.

The truth is, if someone makes amazing art, sings like an angel, or portrays the human condition in film in a way that moves people…the art does live on. The art doesn’t change because our knowledge of the person changes. But damn, our support of that person should.

I grew up with the Cosby Show. I’m of that generation. It was lovely to see a family on TV that so closely resembled mine, a brown family that just like the white ones, had a happy ending at the end of the half hour. But giving a generation a warm-and-fuzzy in the 80s doesn’t absolve Bill Cosby of his Quaalude-filled past, and it certainly isn’t more important than the horror he’s thrust on a trail of women so extensive it is has tipped the scales into a full blown crowd.

I know the dangers of convicting someone before all of the evidence is in, but this isn’t a legal proceeding, Bill Cosby has managed to evade those,  all that is left is the court of public opinion. And for those that believe that 40 women’s voices aren’t enough proof of wrong doing, Bill Cosby’s admission should be. But if nostalgia, of a pretend father as the head of a pretend family espousing values that in real life he shat on, takes precedence over real women then…well…I don’t have words…

If we continue to worship at the altar of Mr. Pudding Pops because he broke new ground so many decades ago then we are telling me and every woman before and after me, it doesn’t matter if someone violates our bodies and minds, as long as he’s funny or talented or rich when he’s doing it. I have three nieces…and I’ll be damned if I let them learn that lesson from me. I’ll call it rape and him a rapist and politely decline his reruns.