And then, spontaneously, they all burst out in laughter. It was an all-too-familiar gesture of self-defense. It was a way to stave off the creep of hate inside your brain.
This is what race hate does to our kids. It often attacks them without warning. It makes them develop a tough exterior to combat the flow of racial insanity into their minds. Thank you, Lord, that Maisha and her friends were wise enough—yes, Lord, a wisdom that only some children in this country have to possess at such an early age—to know that the little white girl was repeating what she heard, that she was reflecting what she’d been taught. Lessons of race that are learned early are hard to get rid of later on. Often they harden into warped perceptions of black folk. Those perceptions turn to cudgels that are wielded against us when we least expect it.
Lord, Maisha has grown into a brilliant woman of haunting beauty. Thank you for that. She now lives in Miami. But the impact of race remains. Maisha’s fair skin makes her appear to be what the film and television industry terms “ethnically ambiguous.” Last year she left her apartment late one evening to have a quiet dinner near the water. She listened to music on her iPhone to make her nine-block stroll more enjoyable. Maisha turned onto a usually quiet street. But on this night a few more folk were on the block, likely getting off work at one of the nearby hotels. Suddenly a guy was walking behind her talking loudly on his phone. She soon figured out he must be a black man when she heard him say, “Nah, Bruh, I just got off and I’m trying to relax and chill.” That vernacular was like a letter from home. Maisha chuckled as she thought to herself, Yeah man, I feel you!
As Maisha made a sharp left turn onto a side street, a white man ran toward her with his arms flailing as if to warn her. Maisha ripped out her ear buds, wondering out loud if he was okay. “Yes,” he exclaimed. “But I don’t know if you realized it, but there was a black man walking behind you!” Maisha furrowed her pretty brow. She was doubly irritated. The man didn’t realize that she’s black. And most annoyingly he believed the black man’s skin immediately made him a suspect. “Yeah?!” Maisha responded. “He had to be a threat just because he was walking, breathing, and black?!”
That’s my girl. She knew, like I know, like most black folk know, that such fear is what gets black folk killed. After all, this is the same state where 17-year-old Trayvon Martin lost his life to a bigoted zealot who was suspicious of Trayvon because, well, he was Trayvon, because a person like him could exist, but shouldn’t have existed, not in that neighborhood on that day.
*
Oh Lord, this is my great fear for my children, for Maisha, and for Michael, and for Mwata, and for my grandchildren too. I am fearful that some smart-assed hotshot with a badge and a gun will thrill himself to the slow letting of blood from one of my children’s bodies while he blithely ignores their suffering to high-five his sworn “to protect and serve” compatriot in crime. I am sorely afraid that some snap of racist judgment—which, by now, means that it will be justified as rational assessment under threatening circumstances, circumstances that our color always provokes—will cause the hair trigger of some cop’s weapon to fire fury at my children.
Don’t let it happen, Lord, please don’t let it happen. Oh Lord, I cannot bear the thought of seeing another black person perish because of the weaponized fear and armed hostility of a society that hates black folk in its guts. It can happen to any of us. It can happen to all of us. That is why we are all scared, Lord.
*
My oldest son, Mwata, is an anesthesiologist who lives in New York. My three children have six degrees, two of them from Ivy League schools. But that is no protection, Lord. Sometimes it even incites anger and resentment. Black success often breeds white rage. Black educational advance will not keep a cop with a terminal degree of black revulsion from aiming his ignorance at my children’s bodies.
A couple of years ago Mwata and his oldest son, Mosi, went looking in New Jersey for a Mother’s Day gift for Mosi’s mother, Wanda. Mwata had clocked out of work in Brooklyn in mid-afternoon to pick up Mosi from his after school program in Queens. Mwata didn’t own a car at the time so he rented a Zipcar for the day. Mwata and Mosi set out at five o’clock, seeking to avoid getting snarled in traffic. Mwata consulted an app on his phone to chart the quickest route. He placed his phone on the dashboard to avoid getting a ticket for driving and talking on a cell phone. When he made a right turn onto a street in Harlem, the phone slipped from the dashboard and fell to the floor. As he retrieved the phone, the glare in the dark must have attracted the attention of a cop. Mwata could see the flashing lights from a squad car behind him. He heard the command from the cop’s loudspeaker to pull his car over. Mwata was afraid that he had run a stop sign that he didn’t see.
A white cop, about 5'9" and in his early forties, approached the car and asked to see Mwata’s driver’s license. He offered no reason for stopping my son. The cop went back to his car for about ten minutes before returning to Mwata, who asked the policeman why he pulled him over. “It’s illegal to drive and talk on a cell phone at the same time in New York,” the cop replied. Mwata said that even though he had a Washington, D.C., driver’s license, the law certainly made sense. “However, officer, I wasn’t talking on the phone, nor was I texting, for that matter.”
I have always impressed on Mwata the need to be extra courteous and not to in any way rile up the police. It is often an exercise in humiliation, one that white folk barely have to think about, but one that can mean the difference between life and death for us. Mwata tried to make nice with the cop. He informed him that as a physician he had spent many years as a member of trauma teams in Chicago, Phoenix, and New York. He told him he was well aware of the dangers of multitasking while operating a vehicle. He said that he had saved, and unfortunately lost, many lives because of tragic car accidents. Mwata told the cop that his phone had slipped to the floor and he simply picked it up. Now Mosi, who had fallen asleep, began to stir.
The policeman went back and forth with Mwata about driving and talking, and Mwata kept politely insisting that he had broken no law. The cop was growing more belligerent and insulting. Still, Mwata tied to placate him by speaking in measured tones. It didn’t help. He even showed the cop a police benevolent association card with the name and cell phone number of a cop he had just treated a couple of days earlier. The cop told Mwata the policeman on the card wasn’t in his precinct. He coldly said it meant nothing to him. The cop grew more agitated as he tried to extract from Mwata a confession that he had broken the law. He took a couple of steps away from the car and ominously placed his hand on his gun.