Nigger in a Suit (Part2)
The Story:
I work in an office. I have my own cubicle. Every day I put on a shirt and slacks and ride the train into downtown chicago (the loop) along with a hoard of unhappy-looking men and women: suit-and-tie-pinstripe-skirt-white-ipod-earphone-wearing-starbucks-sipping-blackberry-wielding type of folks. My office building has a straight shot marble hallway from the glass door to the brass elevator. Every day I ride up that elevator to the 13th floor where I work: making copies and phone calls and fiddling with ungodly excell spreadsheets for a charter school nonprofit.
Tonight I am working late. I plan on working on a memo until maybe 10 or 11pm. So I take a break from my computer to join my good friend Jon (visiting from out of town) for a bite to eat. I come back at about 8 to find the inner door to building locked. So I am standing in the "breezeway" as some call it - the awkwardly small space between the street and the door to the marble hallway. I often see UPS men here, cart half in the door, balancing packages precariously on thier hips while they search the glass-encased directory to find the offices they are looking for. And of course, of fucking course, because I am an intern at this 13th floor office, i do not have a key to the building.
So I am waiting there, pressing my face up to the glass like a little puppy (buy me please?). You can see through this glass door all the way down the hallway to elevators. And I am waiting. Someone please come and see my little puppy face and open this damn door. And I have been there maybe 3 minutes when finally the elevator doors open and an old white lady (maybe 60) steps out into the hallway.
She is in going home mode, checking to make sure she has not left anything up in the office, patting her pockets for keys. And then she looks up and sees me. Sees me standing there - no longer looking like a puppy really, but simply calmly standing in the breezeway.
And all of a sudden we are on the discovery channel. She stops in her tracks, in mid-pocket-key-pat. Like a gazelle when it realizes that it is surrounded by lions. Like they say deers do as you speed toward them on the highway (i have never seen it actually happen). And I am wondering the whole time, what the hell is she looking at? But, deep down, I know. I know exactly what she sees through that glass. You know every time, but pray that you are being irrational, that maybe she is wondering if it is raining out or wondering if she has left her inhaler up at her cubicle. And then she begins to back up - carefully - like you do when you come across the path of a skunk. No sudden movements. And she disappears around the corner. Only I know, just as well as she does, that there is nothing around that corner but an unmanned security desk (security goes home at 7) and a well potted orchid (for color). There is no other exit back around that corner. This is the only way out. And I am trying not to believe what is happening. Please please be blowing things out of proportion. And then I see her poking her head out to see if I am still there. She is hiding.
And so give a polite knock. "Hello, Im locked out."
And after a few minutes she comes back into the hallway. Hands at her sides, just staring at me. Like if she stares hard enough the stare will push me out of the doors and back onto the street. And I am confused as to whether this is a shoot out or not. All we need is a big clock tower and people watching from behind barrels and saloon doors. And finally she decides to walk toward me. And when I continue to stand there, she finally draws, "No No" she yells. It explodes from her. I didn't think she spoke. She is shaking her head "you can't come in." "I work in this building", I exclaim, "I was locked out". "Where is your ID." I have no fucking idea what she is talking about. No one in the building has company ID's. "I work at the illinois network of charter schools, suite 1300...please" "No way" And I see how terrified she is of me. She doesn't know where to look, what to say - she's frozen. And that terror somehow turns the glass of the door into a mirror. I am looking at her. And she is looking at me. But as I look through the glass at her, reflected onto the glass is another image - I see myself through her eyes - the dark terrifying rapist behind the glass. Just waiting for her to open the door so I tear her to bits. Rip off her clothes. Sort through her wallet (taking everything of value - to later use to purchase crack) and find the addresses of her family. I see the beast she sees - waiting to take everything that she holds dear.
"Do you have work here?" I ask. "Yes, on the third floor." "Where is YOUR ID?" I say. And she is silent.
And I want so badly to put on the show for her. To put her at ease by using my best ivy league accent. Look at these clothes I am wearing for godsake! Rapists don't wear these clothes. I want to press my Brown University Student ID (I am carrying two in my back pocket) and tell her everything about my office and how I belong there. I want to prove it. But I know even that - even if I could convince her to let me in - it would be by convincing her that I am one of the good ones. I am not one of those. I am not from the street. 'I know you think my people are violent, but look at this card, I am one of the good ones, the nice ones, i have proof' Look at my pressed shirt and 100 dollar shoes. I am no gangster. I am no nigger. Let me soft shoe for you. Let blacken my face in burnt cork so that the brilliance of my smile is highlighted. Look how gentle I am. Look at these clothes damnit. Dont see the blackness beneath, see the kahaki's and be impressed by how well they are ironed. Please' mam.' See me. See me.
And I am breaking. Everything inside is falling apart, coming loose. And I can feel something waiting in me, something damning up, waiting to spill. And I am afraid of my own anger - afraid that I am loosing control and will (am) becoming exactly what she wants me to be.
"Have a good day" I say smuggly and storm out and on to the street. Over my shoulder I see that she has entered the breezeway/nigger screening room and is now checking the directory to see if I was telling the truth.
I take a walk and come back 15 minutes later. CJ, lets just get up to the office, forget about this bitch, and get the memo done. And as I am standing in outside, once again looking down the hallway, the elevator doors open. Out steps another white women. Younger, maybe 40, late 30s. She is dressed in pink. She sees me, outside on the street, holding the door and she hesitates. Reverses. And I know where she is going. And I am not going to wait for her to emerge from hiding behind the desk. I am not going to put myself through that again - allow myself to be changed by her. I don't want to deal with any of it. The fucking memo is not worth it. I go home.
My step mother reminds me to see it from her point of view. (I feel like I have done already). "You are a man", she says, "standing outside the office building at 8pm." Its still light out, I want to remind her. "If you worked there you would have had a key." "Im not justifying her," she continues "I'm just saying try to see it from a woman's point of view - you are a strange man waiting outside of a locked building."
And I want to believe her. I want to eat up all that rationality and explanation and think that the color of my skin had nothing to do with it at all. Please be blowing things out of proportion. But I cannot help but think that things would have been different - that the clothes would have been more convincing had there been white skin beneath. If only the man at the door looked more like her son or husband once looked. Trust worthy. Responsible - like he belongs in an office building.
And that, that thought process right there "maybe I am being unreasonable" was why I wanted to write this blog entry. Racist bitch bars black ivy league student from entering own building. Thats been done. Clieche. If you even see it as racist, the most it provokes is a "shit, that sucks."
What is far more interesting, however, is the feeling of being so hurt by something - so affected by something that seems to you to be so obviously racist - and then have to question it, have to think "am I blowing things out of proportion"? That right there speaks to the core of what it is to be a person of color in america. Black especially. We are confined to a role as the madman, the one outrageous one who sees racism everywhere. You know you have thought it before. "I have this black friend, she is way too sensitive about things?" "Why do black people think everything is about oppression." We are the unreasonable ones in the same way that feminists are branded as penis-hating militants. Just as we think in the case of young children and old people with imaginary friends, those who talk about that which we cannot see, must be delusional. After all, if it was real, we would see it right?
Same thing with microracisms. Because it is invisible to you, we are crazy for believing in it. That is the burden of being black or brown or anything not white. Every time our raised hand is skipped by a professor in class, every time someone switches seats on a train, locks their door at an intersection, grasps their purse as we walk by we cannot help but wonder if it if that action has been initiated by the color of our skin. It certainly could be a harmless coincidence. Maybe it is 50% of the time 75% of the time. But our burden, one a white person never has to deal with, is the thought, maybe that wasn't harmless. Our experience has taught us better, has taught us to expect to encounter fear, distrust, and low expectation.
And as I was riding home, having left my office work behind, I thought to myself, how many times has this happened. Ahh fuck it, its not worth it. How many times a day does a non-white person decide to not go into that bar, to not try that shirt on. I think about all the times we try to be less threatening, make ourselves look smaller than we actually are. Thats exactly what we are doing, making ourselves smaller. Never open a backpack in a store. If a waiter brings the credit card back declined do not ask him to run it again; everyone is already looking and has decided who you are. Carry two ID's, just in case. Be smaller. Be quieter. Make them feel at ease. Buy a suit nice enough and black enough for them to forget what color your skin is underneath.
And if anyone ever says, "come on, you are blowing it out of proportion," you better damn sure agree with them. "Yeah, maybe your right..."
Id much rather be crazy, you think, than right.
I work in an office. I have my own cubicle. Every day I put on a shirt and slacks and ride the train into downtown chicago (the loop) along with a hoard of unhappy-looking men and women: suit-and-tie-pinstripe-skirt-white-ipod-earphone-wearing-starbucks-sipping-blackberry-wielding type of folks. My office building has a straight shot marble hallway from the glass door to the brass elevator. Every day I ride up that elevator to the 13th floor where I work: making copies and phone calls and fiddling with ungodly excell spreadsheets for a charter school nonprofit.
Tonight I am working late. I plan on working on a memo until maybe 10 or 11pm. So I take a break from my computer to join my good friend Jon (visiting from out of town) for a bite to eat. I come back at about 8 to find the inner door to building locked. So I am standing in the "breezeway" as some call it - the awkwardly small space between the street and the door to the marble hallway. I often see UPS men here, cart half in the door, balancing packages precariously on thier hips while they search the glass-encased directory to find the offices they are looking for. And of course, of fucking course, because I am an intern at this 13th floor office, i do not have a key to the building.
So I am waiting there, pressing my face up to the glass like a little puppy (buy me please?). You can see through this glass door all the way down the hallway to elevators. And I am waiting. Someone please come and see my little puppy face and open this damn door. And I have been there maybe 3 minutes when finally the elevator doors open and an old white lady (maybe 60) steps out into the hallway.
She is in going home mode, checking to make sure she has not left anything up in the office, patting her pockets for keys. And then she looks up and sees me. Sees me standing there - no longer looking like a puppy really, but simply calmly standing in the breezeway.
And all of a sudden we are on the discovery channel. She stops in her tracks, in mid-pocket-key-pat. Like a gazelle when it realizes that it is surrounded by lions. Like they say deers do as you speed toward them on the highway (i have never seen it actually happen). And I am wondering the whole time, what the hell is she looking at? But, deep down, I know. I know exactly what she sees through that glass. You know every time, but pray that you are being irrational, that maybe she is wondering if it is raining out or wondering if she has left her inhaler up at her cubicle. And then she begins to back up - carefully - like you do when you come across the path of a skunk. No sudden movements. And she disappears around the corner. Only I know, just as well as she does, that there is nothing around that corner but an unmanned security desk (security goes home at 7) and a well potted orchid (for color). There is no other exit back around that corner. This is the only way out. And I am trying not to believe what is happening. Please please be blowing things out of proportion. And then I see her poking her head out to see if I am still there. She is hiding.
And so give a polite knock. "Hello, Im locked out."
And after a few minutes she comes back into the hallway. Hands at her sides, just staring at me. Like if she stares hard enough the stare will push me out of the doors and back onto the street. And I am confused as to whether this is a shoot out or not. All we need is a big clock tower and people watching from behind barrels and saloon doors. And finally she decides to walk toward me. And when I continue to stand there, she finally draws, "No No" she yells. It explodes from her. I didn't think she spoke. She is shaking her head "you can't come in." "I work in this building", I exclaim, "I was locked out". "Where is your ID." I have no fucking idea what she is talking about. No one in the building has company ID's. "I work at the illinois network of charter schools, suite 1300...please" "No way" And I see how terrified she is of me. She doesn't know where to look, what to say - she's frozen. And that terror somehow turns the glass of the door into a mirror. I am looking at her. And she is looking at me. But as I look through the glass at her, reflected onto the glass is another image - I see myself through her eyes - the dark terrifying rapist behind the glass. Just waiting for her to open the door so I tear her to bits. Rip off her clothes. Sort through her wallet (taking everything of value - to later use to purchase crack) and find the addresses of her family. I see the beast she sees - waiting to take everything that she holds dear.
"Do you have work here?" I ask. "Yes, on the third floor." "Where is YOUR ID?" I say. And she is silent.
And I want so badly to put on the show for her. To put her at ease by using my best ivy league accent. Look at these clothes I am wearing for godsake! Rapists don't wear these clothes. I want to press my Brown University Student ID (I am carrying two in my back pocket) and tell her everything about my office and how I belong there. I want to prove it. But I know even that - even if I could convince her to let me in - it would be by convincing her that I am one of the good ones. I am not one of those. I am not from the street. 'I know you think my people are violent, but look at this card, I am one of the good ones, the nice ones, i have proof' Look at my pressed shirt and 100 dollar shoes. I am no gangster. I am no nigger. Let me soft shoe for you. Let blacken my face in burnt cork so that the brilliance of my smile is highlighted. Look how gentle I am. Look at these clothes damnit. Dont see the blackness beneath, see the kahaki's and be impressed by how well they are ironed. Please' mam.' See me. See me.
And I am breaking. Everything inside is falling apart, coming loose. And I can feel something waiting in me, something damning up, waiting to spill. And I am afraid of my own anger - afraid that I am loosing control and will (am) becoming exactly what she wants me to be.
"Have a good day" I say smuggly and storm out and on to the street. Over my shoulder I see that she has entered the breezeway/nigger screening room and is now checking the directory to see if I was telling the truth.
I take a walk and come back 15 minutes later. CJ, lets just get up to the office, forget about this bitch, and get the memo done. And as I am standing in outside, once again looking down the hallway, the elevator doors open. Out steps another white women. Younger, maybe 40, late 30s. She is dressed in pink. She sees me, outside on the street, holding the door and she hesitates. Reverses. And I know where she is going. And I am not going to wait for her to emerge from hiding behind the desk. I am not going to put myself through that again - allow myself to be changed by her. I don't want to deal with any of it. The fucking memo is not worth it. I go home.
My step mother reminds me to see it from her point of view. (I feel like I have done already). "You are a man", she says, "standing outside the office building at 8pm." Its still light out, I want to remind her. "If you worked there you would have had a key." "Im not justifying her," she continues "I'm just saying try to see it from a woman's point of view - you are a strange man waiting outside of a locked building."
And I want to believe her. I want to eat up all that rationality and explanation and think that the color of my skin had nothing to do with it at all. Please be blowing things out of proportion. But I cannot help but think that things would have been different - that the clothes would have been more convincing had there been white skin beneath. If only the man at the door looked more like her son or husband once looked. Trust worthy. Responsible - like he belongs in an office building.
And that, that thought process right there "maybe I am being unreasonable" was why I wanted to write this blog entry. Racist bitch bars black ivy league student from entering own building. Thats been done. Clieche. If you even see it as racist, the most it provokes is a "shit, that sucks."
What is far more interesting, however, is the feeling of being so hurt by something - so affected by something that seems to you to be so obviously racist - and then have to question it, have to think "am I blowing things out of proportion"? That right there speaks to the core of what it is to be a person of color in america. Black especially. We are confined to a role as the madman, the one outrageous one who sees racism everywhere. You know you have thought it before. "I have this black friend, she is way too sensitive about things?" "Why do black people think everything is about oppression." We are the unreasonable ones in the same way that feminists are branded as penis-hating militants. Just as we think in the case of young children and old people with imaginary friends, those who talk about that which we cannot see, must be delusional. After all, if it was real, we would see it right?
Same thing with microracisms. Because it is invisible to you, we are crazy for believing in it. That is the burden of being black or brown or anything not white. Every time our raised hand is skipped by a professor in class, every time someone switches seats on a train, locks their door at an intersection, grasps their purse as we walk by we cannot help but wonder if it if that action has been initiated by the color of our skin. It certainly could be a harmless coincidence. Maybe it is 50% of the time 75% of the time. But our burden, one a white person never has to deal with, is the thought, maybe that wasn't harmless. Our experience has taught us better, has taught us to expect to encounter fear, distrust, and low expectation.
And as I was riding home, having left my office work behind, I thought to myself, how many times has this happened. Ahh fuck it, its not worth it. How many times a day does a non-white person decide to not go into that bar, to not try that shirt on. I think about all the times we try to be less threatening, make ourselves look smaller than we actually are. Thats exactly what we are doing, making ourselves smaller. Never open a backpack in a store. If a waiter brings the credit card back declined do not ask him to run it again; everyone is already looking and has decided who you are. Carry two ID's, just in case. Be smaller. Be quieter. Make them feel at ease. Buy a suit nice enough and black enough for them to forget what color your skin is underneath.
And if anyone ever says, "come on, you are blowing it out of proportion," you better damn sure agree with them. "Yeah, maybe your right..."
Id much rather be crazy, you think, than right.
posted by CJ Hunt | 9:39 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home