June 2020

I have been thinking about the turmoil the U.S. is experiencing, particularly what it means to be a Black American. I have connected with friends but also reflected on what positive role I, a member of the white majority, can play in America’s unfolding story of Black and White. A recent report titled “Reinventing Democracy For The 21st Century” states that “our ties to one another are fragile. The very institutions that should be the instrument of our freedom and the source of our protection appear to fail us. We do not trust them; we do not trust one another. In fear for and anxiety about our own prospects, we turn on one another.”

I write this personal essay as a way to turn to one another, with greater understanding and empathy. The events depicted — two ‘meetings’ with Black men — happened about 25 years ago in the 1990s. We must in the words of the report “kindle a spirit . . . of humility that rehumanizes us.” It’s the quest to build “a more perfect union,” to become closer to “our better angels.” This mission gives me hope and faith, which we need these days.

Lost on a dark night, I pulled into an empty shopping center parking lot somewhere in Prince Georges County, Maryland. I needed directions back to the Beltway. Stores had closed long ago. “Keep cool. Look for someone, and ask for the way back,” I told myself.

A lone figure crossed the lot in the distance. I rolled down the window and hailed the person. “Can you help me?”

My hands gripped the wheel — something to hold onto in an unfamiliar place.

He approached the car. He was angular, probably in his mid-30s — a bit older than me—and Black.

***

A few years earlier walking down a street in northwest Washington, DC, I myself had approached a Black guy on a dark night. He was standing outside a parked car, talking through the passenger side window to the driver. I thought of my wallet and my safety. I quickly weighed my options: cross the street and allay my fear or continue to walk straight and see what happens. Consciously, decisively, I made a decision. I overruled a gut feeling that I’d be safer putting distance between me and the unfamiliar Black man and walked straight ahead.

***

Racism, I learned in college, is making a decision based on the color of someone’s skin. An almost clinical definition that kept me detached for decades. You see, I have always thought of myself as open-minded. My father was a diplomat. We lived surrounded by other cultures in Thailand, Laos, Hong Kong and China before returning to the US when I was 11. In junior high school in the Washington, DC suburbs, I gave myself good marks for getting along with all kinds of kids, especially the ones bussed in from Montgomery Hills. They were Hispanics, Blacks and Whites from “the other side” of Connecticut Avenue, apartment dwellers arriving in our neighborhood of houses.

In eighth grade I met Derek. He came on the bus. His Dad was Ella Fitzgerald’s bass player. Derek had a wonderful smile and shiny white teeth against dark black skin. He also had a knack for good-natured teasing, and I can still remember his laugh today. Singing, making up rhymes and playing basketball, Derek connected with other kids immediately, and we clicked. He came to my house, and I went to his. He was my first Black friend.

In college there was Kenard. Like Derek, he had a magnetic personality and a broad smile. Even their names were alike — Derek Betts and Kenard Gibbs. Same number of syllables, with those double consonants linking them like twin brothers in the passage of my life. That I connected with these two guys meant — as far as I could tell — that I connected with African Americans. I was open-minded; I wasn’t racist.

***

But life doesn’t allow you to stay detached forever. It intrudes and forces you to confront yourself, your past and, yes, your family history. Let’s get back to that parking lot and me needing directions.

The Black man at my window peered at me.

“Hi,” I greeted him nervously. “Can you tell me how to get back to the Beltway?” He offered directions. All that was left was to thank him.

“Thank you, boy,” I said.

Silence.

The word had broken the space between us. The man at the window seemed to grow bigger. My heart raced. Quickly rolling up the window, I gunned the engine and drove away. As I sped from the parking lot, his voice trailed away.

I still remember the unease I felt that night more than 20 years ago. How strange for me to call a grown Black man a boy. Where did it come from? Had previous generations of my family somehow lodged the word inside of me?

My mother’s side of the family had a plantation with slaves in southern antebellum Virginia. Robert E. Lee, my grandfather once told me, is an ancestor. I’d heard grandfather himself, who grew up in Kentucky, use the “n” word and the term “those darkies.”

I don’t dismiss that night. I said the word, and I own the experience. The incident left me insecure about race relations, doubtful of my open-mindedness and perplexed by history’s power to work in unconscious ways.

***

So, what happened that dark night when I approached the unfamiliar Black man by the side of the parked car?

“Yo, man,” he said as I passed him, “give me all your money.” I pulled out my wallet and gave him my $40.

“No, man, I mean the real money,” he added, his hands in his jacket pockets.

I fished around a bit more and gave him the Hungarian forints I had left over from a recent trip.

“Now, walk straight. If you turn around, I’ll blow your head off.”

I learned that next time I’ll follow my intuition and cross the street. I will make a choice based on the color of someone’s skin, aware of my history and mindful of my own racism.

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