Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America(5)
Maisha’s heart sank.
And then it started. The predictable questions that hate provokes, all the self-doubt that racism means to implant. Do we know them? What did we do to deserve that? Why did they call us that horrible name?
You made her, Oh Lord. You know that Maisha’s little mind drifted off into a faraway place. You know she sought to deflect the pain she felt. But she was snatched back into a crude reality. It was a hell of a way for her to be introduced to the ugliness and nastiness that racism unleashes. But there is never a good time to be hated because of a small and insignificant thing like the color of your skin. There is never a good time to know that for many white folk your blackness makes you Old Lucifer himself. There is never a good time to realize that your childhood is gone, that it has been rudely taken away by something as simple as a word, a stupid, nasty, filthy, little word. Nigger.
By that time the oldest black girl harked up a mouthful of spit. For the occasion it may as well have been holy water. Lord, it should have been regarded as Holy Communion. The saliva in her throat was transmuted from mere water to divine disgust. That blessed angel of a child planted her feet and then showered those white girls with her liquid resentment. I swear that may have been the biggest miracle since you turned water to wine.
I don’t usually approve of such displays of raw anger. I usually counsel taking the higher road. But I must confess, Oh Lord, that the lower road was just fine that day. Because that was the day precious little Maisha was forced to learn what race meant. That was the day she got an inkling that the world is ruined with tribal loyalties and caste systems and blood oaths pettier than any grudge that children might hold. This was different. This was lethal. The havoc that grownups wreak is always more costly. That episode wore on her for a long spell. But racism is nothing if not persistent and cyclical. It came back to my daughter again a couple of years later.
When she was eight years old, Maisha received a wonderful gift. She tagged along with a close family friend and her two daughters for a private tour of Disney World. Maisha was incredibly excited. It was her first time in Florida. She got a kick out of pronouncing the nearby town of Kissimmee because it contained the word “kiss.” After Maisha and her two little companions settled into their modest hotel in Kissimmee, they begged the girls’ mother to let them go downstairs to the pool immediately. It was a luxury they didn’t have back home; they were just grateful to be in a warm climate away from the chilly winds of Chicago.
The girls plunged into the deep end of the pool. They played mermaids. They played Marco Polo. They pretended to be water gymnasts.
The girls finally took a brief break from play and parked themselves on the pool stairs. Just then the cutest little girl swam their way. She had the biggest blue eyes and natural blonde hair. When she got a gander at Maisha and her two friends, the little girl exclaimed in a matter-of-fact tone, “Niggers.” The girls straightened their backs and screwed up their faces in disbelief. The little white girl stood up in disbelief too, perhaps amazed at the power of her single utterance to evoke such dramatic response. For a moment, they all froze. Maisha and her friends were in shock.
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.