Here are three stories.
I'm 9 or 10 and my mother and I are on a cross-country road trip when we decide to stop for breakfast at a small roadside diner in Mississippi. I'm too young to be aware of the charged atmosphere of racial tension, but something feels odd. It feels odd when the people in the diner—most of whom are white—turn to look at my white mother and me, her brown son, as we enter and make our way to a table. It feels odd when my mom asks if there are raisins to put in her oatmeal and the waitress irritatedly spits, "No!" It feels so odd, in fact, that my mother asks our server if something is wrong: "No!" she barks again. It feels odd when the woman throws down the bill when we're done eating. No one calls us names. No one threatens us. The surly waitress has even specifically told us nothing is wrong. But when we return to the car my visibly shaken mom pulls a canister of pepper spray out of the glove compartment and tests it on the ground to make certain it's functioning properly.
Years later, in high school, I'm headed to a party in my friend Spencer's convertible. It's a warm Arizona evening, and the hot wind is blowing through our hair; we're laughing and listening to rap music. A gum wrapper from somewhere in the car catches a gust of air and takes flight. I'm sure it hasn't even landed before a police car pulls us over, and soon my two black friends and I have flashlights in our faces.
"You think you can litter around here?" one white officer asks.
"You mean that gum wrapper?" I ask back. "I'm very sorry that happened, sir, but this is a convertible. It was a mistake." He writes me a ticket.
A month ago, I'm at a dive bar in Brooklyn. My white friend tells me on the way over that the last time he'd been at this particular bar, a week or two before, he was so drunk he'd danced wildly in the middle of place and belted out songs along with the jukebox—his wife and young son were out of town and he was cutting loose. I order a round of beers for our party. We drink them and another friend, a Middle Eastern man with a mop of curly black hair, goes to order another round. When I see it's taking him longer to order than it should, I walk up to the bar and ask what's wrong.
"Your friend here's too drunk," the bartender says. "I'm cutting him off." My friend—having spent years in Germany, no stranger to beer—has had less to drink than anyone else in our party.
"Then I'll buy a round," I tell the bartender.
"You're too drunk, too," he says. "You're both cut off."
I survey the room. "I'm not sure it's a coincidence that you're cutting off the only two brown people in the whole bar," I say.
"I don't have a prejudiced bone in my body," the bartender says.
We walk back and tell our friends what's happened. Two of them—a white woman and a white man who's had a comparable amount to drink as me—order two beers apiece, no questions asked. Despite the fact that we've now got four new beers, nobody much feels like drinking them, and so we leave. I'm served at two more bars that night, and at both I wonder to myself if these bartenders are being unscrupulously generous with an obviously inebriated man. Are my brown friend and I really drunker than all of our friends? Are we shameful? Are we the wasted minorities in a bar full of unprejudiced white people who want us out of there?
I think one of the most damaging effects America's omnipresent racism has on a person's psyche isn't the brief pang of hurt that comes from being called a slur, or seeing a picture of Barack Obama portrayed by a chimpanzee. Those things are common and old-fashioned, and when they happen I tend to feel sadder than angry, because I'm seeing someone who engages with the world like a wall instead of a human being. Rather, I think what's far more corrosive and insidious, the thing that lingers in the back of my mind the most, is the framework of plausible deniability built up around racism, and how insane that plausible deniability can make a person feel when wielded. How unsure of oneself. How worried that you might be overreacting, oversensitive, irrational.
I'm 9 or 10 and my mother and I are on a cross-country road trip when we decide to stop for breakfast at a small roadside diner in Mississippi. I'm too young to be aware of the charged atmosphere of racial tension, but something feels odd. It feels odd when the people in the diner—most of whom are white—turn to look at my white mother and me, her brown son, as we enter and make our way to a table. It feels odd when my mom asks if there are raisins to put in her oatmeal and the waitress irritatedly spits, "No!" It feels so odd, in fact, that my mother asks our server if something is wrong: "No!" she barks again. It feels odd when the woman throws down the bill when we're done eating. No one calls us names. No one threatens us. The surly waitress has even specifically told us nothing is wrong. But when we return to the car my visibly shaken mom pulls a canister of pepper spray out of the glove compartment and tests it on the ground to make certain it's functioning properly.Years later, in high school, I'm headed to a party in my friend Spencer's convertible. It's a warm Arizona evening, and the hot wind is blowing through our hair; we're laughing and listening to rap music. A gum wrapper from somewhere in the car catches a gust of air and takes flight. I'm sure it hasn't even landed before a police car pulls us over, and soon my two black friends and I have flashlights in our faces.
"You think you can litter around here?" one white officer asks.
"You mean that gum wrapper?" I ask back. "I'm very sorry that happened, sir, but this is a convertible. It was a mistake." He writes me a ticket.
A month ago, I'm at a dive bar in Brooklyn. My white friend tells me on the way over that the last time he'd been at this particular bar, a week or two before, he was so drunk he'd danced wildly in the middle of place and belted out songs along with the jukebox—his wife and young son were out of town and he was cutting loose. I order a round of beers for our party. We drink them and another friend, a Middle Eastern man with a mop of curly black hair, goes to order another round. When I see it's taking him longer to order than it should, I walk up to the bar and ask what's wrong.
"Your friend here's too drunk," the bartender says. "I'm cutting him off." My friend—having spent years in Germany, no stranger to beer—has had less to drink than anyone else in our party.
"Then I'll buy a round," I tell the bartender.
"You're too drunk, too," he says. "You're both cut off."
I survey the room. "I'm not sure it's a coincidence that you're cutting off the only two brown people in the whole bar," I say.
"I don't have a prejudiced bone in my body," the bartender says.
We walk back and tell our friends what's happened. Two of them—a white woman and a white man who's had a comparable amount to drink as me—order two beers apiece, no questions asked. Despite the fact that we've now got four new beers, nobody much feels like drinking them, and so we leave. I'm served at two more bars that night, and at both I wonder to myself if these bartenders are being unscrupulously generous with an obviously inebriated man. Are my brown friend and I really drunker than all of our friends? Are we shameful? Are we the wasted minorities in a bar full of unprejudiced white people who want us out of there?
I think one of the most damaging effects America's omnipresent racism has on a person's psyche isn't the brief pang of hurt that comes from being called a slur, or seeing a picture of Barack Obama portrayed by a chimpanzee. Those things are common and old-fashioned, and when they happen I tend to feel sadder than angry, because I'm seeing someone who engages with the world like a wall instead of a human being. Rather, I think what's far more corrosive and insidious, the thing that lingers in the back of my mind the most, is the framework of plausible deniability built up around racism, and how insane that plausible deniability can make a person feel when wielded. How unsure of oneself. How worried that you might be overreacting, oversensitive, irrational.
by Cord Jefferson, Gawker | Read more:
Image: uncredited
