What's Wrong With Your Girl? A Guest Post

                              Photo is not the location of the incident.


I've previously shared here about the experiences of racism and bigotry that I endured as a kid when my parents and I lived in a small Midwestern town back in the 1970's. 

Aside from that era my life, (well, except for that time I had a Russian boyfriend and his family made it clear that having an American friend was just fine, but a woman who was both Black and American was most definitely not good enough to marry. But I digress.) I had not experienced obvious racism as an adult.

That changed last week. Although at the time, I didn't actually know it was happening.  Below, is a guest post from my husband, aka MickGee. 

My Black wife, our son and I (White guy) were traveling east on the 299 Fwy heading inland from the coast. After about 2 hours on winding mountain roads, we arrived at a small town 2/3 of the way to our destination. My beautiful bride and our 11-year-old son needed to stop and use the bathroom. We looked for a gas station. The two of them wanted one with a food mart so they could get some snacks as well.

I pulled into the small gas station and watched my family walk away from the car toward the bathrooms on the other side of the parking lot. I stood at the rear of the car and waited. Just as they walked out of sight a woman who was sitting on the curb in front of the store, near where I parked our car, yelled something at me.

It sounded like, “Hey, what’s wrong with your girl?!”

Since I wasn’t exactly sure what she said, I responded with, “What?”

I was in luck as the woman spoke again repeating her statement and then offered more. She said,

“What’s wrong with your GIRL, she said ‘F@#k that white woman!’ and then your BOY looked right at me”.

I was shocked and stunned… however only for a moment. My mind now began to race in the seconds I had to analyze the situation, I wondered a number of things; is this woman sitting here in front of this store just here to start S^&t or was this the first part of a scam with the store owners? Were some guys parked in one of the trucks around the corner or across the parking lot about to drive up and threaten me or worse?

I thought, does this woman distract me while someone runs up and slams my wife and kid? Could it be she is so completely racist that the moment she sees a black person she can’t help but start the assault first with words and then try and draw you into some escalated conflict?

I quickly scanned the parking lot and did a 360 assessment of our surroundings to be sure we were not in any serious danger. That is when the rusted white and muddy Ford pick-up rolled up between me and my wife and son blocking the front door to the store. Next, I watched the driver enter the store only to be followed seconds later by my wife and son.

I didn’t want my wife to fear that anything was wrong and I didn’t want to escalate things so I smiled at my family as the two of them entered the store.  I then responded to the woman,

“You must be talking about someone else,” I said

Then after a brief pause, I added, “Sounds like you are making stuff up.”

This time the woman didn’t respond. However, in the minutes that passed, I noticed she did seem to know everyone who came and went at the gas station and they seemed to know her.  

I started counting to 30. This was all the time I was going to allow my family to be alone in the store. I was ready to go in after them if I saw one more ‘Local’ go in the store. 

Full disclosure, I had warned my wife just before she had left the car, “Let me know if anyone gives you any trouble.” I said this because I grew up in an area like the one we were in and had that sense of the ‘attitude’ of the environment.  

So I held my breath and tightened my stomach (and my ass) as I prepared for some kind of hit-n-run confrontation. I was ready to launch an assault against whoever was trying to accost my family. In case we had to make a mad dash for the car and the open road.

Lucky for all of us after the two most valuable people in my world came from the store, walked past the woman sitting on the curb out front,  and returned to the car, I asked my wife if the woman sitting on the curb had said anything to them. She said, “No… why?”

I lied saying, “No reason” not wanting to expose my son to this drama and not wanting my wife to freak out.   

It was in that moment that it struck me. I was the one being shown racism and prejudice here. In a microsecond of time, I was getting the smallest sliver of what it is like to be a person of color in most parts of America today. I felt like the whole world (or at least town) was out to get me. Like I was isolated and vulnerable. It was terrifying. Like I was going to have to fight for my life and those I loved at a moment’s notice for no other reason than because of who I was or who I was with.

Now I am not going to pretend that I experienced racism like a black person does. But for one small instant, my understanding expanded well beyond what it had been just moments before this racist white piece of S%^t tried unsuccessfully to traumatize my family.

It is because of that helpless terrifying feeling that I can now share this. There was one other series of thoughts that went through my mind. Okay, maybe 2. The first was a response I might have said if I wanted to be ‘that guy’ with an attitude.

When the white racist lady asked ‘what’s wrong with your girl?’ I wanted to respond with “You know what? Absolutely nothing, that’s what I love about her.” Just to piss her off and throw her off guard.  

I also had this response rolling around in the part of my brain or manhood that wanted to say…while shoving my face 2 inches in front of her face so she could feel the heat of my anger and murderous hate,

“You F%^king sack of S&*t! You say one more thing about my family and I will chain you to this cement pillar and burn you and this f#$king store to the ground. Say something else. See what happens Mother F@#ker! I guarantee they will be THE LAST WORDS YOU EVER SPEAK!!!”

Or something along those lines.

But because I know that every man has his limits and as big as I am I can’t fight everyone in town at once. So with that in mind, my family and I then calmly got into the car and got the hell out of Hicksville.

#BlackLivesMatter2Me #EndRacismNOW!   

A Tale of Two Churches: Remembering Birmingham

September 15th.  

On this day fifty-three years ago in a little country church, in a small Georgia town, there was a wedding.  

The young bride and groom met a few years prior at Savannah State University.  The year before they wed, the groom spent several months overseas with the military.

Now, their day had finally come. Surrounded by family and friends, they began their new life together. Within a few hours, they were on the road, heading west to California, where the bride had always dreamt of living one day.

That same day in another church only 200 miles northwest, five excited young girls were downstairs in their church’s basement preparing for Sunday school.  Sadly, the lesson they would learn was one of hatred and death.  Demonic, murderous hatred for no other reason than the color of their skin.  They attended the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. 

When the dynamite exploded beneath the church building, my hope is that they didn’t suffer and were already in the arms of the Lord before they had any awareness of what had been done to them.

The blast killed four of the girls: Addie Mae Collins (14) Carole Robertson (14) Cynthia Wesley (14) and Denise McNair (11).  Sarah Collins, the younger sister of Addie Mae survived the attack, but lost an eye and needed to have several reconstructive facial surgeries.

The young couple whose wedding I began this post with, were my parents.  Birmingham was my father’s hometown, and without realizing it they would be spending their wedding night in a war zone.    I asked my mother once if she and my father knew what was going on that day.  They had heard some news about it but did not know the full extent of what had transpired.

Our 11-year-old son is homeschooled.   Today, our social studies lesson was about the terrorist bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church and the devastating role it played in the civil rights movement.   After watching a short film about the attack, my son’s face was solemn, his eyes close to years.  Mine were as well.

My husband and I proceeded to educate him on the reasons why someone would bomb a church of all places, without having any thought or care about the death left in their wake. 

We also talked about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy visiting family in Mississippi the summer of 1955, who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered for supposedly flirting with a white woman. 

Today I had to make it clear to my biracial son, that there were and still are people in this world who would have no problem killing Black and biracial children as well as adults, convinced they’d be doing the right thing.    

As I type this, I’m sad that it was even necessary to tell my son about such atrocities. Not "out there" in another country, here in our own. But, this is the world we live in.  

So, it’s with a heavy heart tonight that I contemplate the lives of those four little girls and their unwitting sacrifice.  Their lives stolen, not by some foreign terrorist group, but four* fellow Americans, Ku Klux Klan members, drunk on the ideology of white supremacy that has never really left this country.  Yes, even with a Black family in the White House.

It has only become more subtle over the decades, and as a result, harder to prove.  

May we never forget.

Addie Mae Collins

Carole Robertson

Cynthia Wesley

Denise McNair

Rest in Peace and Power

Amen

#blacklivesmatter

#Birmingham

Vigilance And Victory: How The Birmingham Church Bombing Revealed America’s Ugly Truths

9 Things You Should Know About the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

That Which Might Have Been: Birmingham 1963

The Speech That Shocked Birmingham The Day After The Bombing

Condoleeza Rice Recalls Birmingham Bombing That Killed Childhood Friend

Washington Post Report: September 16th, 1963

"Terrorism is Part of Our History": Angela Davis on '63 Church Bombing, Growing up in"Bombingham"

Martin Luther King Jr. 'Eulogy for the Young Victims September18, 1963

Birmingham Sunday, Joan Baez

*I don't feel the need in this post to list the names of the guilty. The info is easily found by a simple Google search.

The Sound of Silence Beneath an Ocean of Denial

              (photo credit: Marine Mining on Investing News Network,  2010)                                                                                                                         

So, I’ve had some things rolling around in my head for the last few weeks, questions that I hope to receive honest answers to.

Due to emotions running high over the latest police killings of black men, the assassinations of five police officers in Dallas by a sniper, and another three in Baton Rouge, LA (both shooters ex-military) a few days ago, I’ve been having some, shall we say spirited online conversations.

The most challenging have been with white individuals who seem to prefer in these times to defensively respond with #allivesmatter, believing that saying #blacklivesmatter is exclusionary and racist.

During the back and forth expressing our opinions and facts as we see them, complete with links to sites and memes sure to prove the other wrong, I have noticed a common thread in all of these interactions.

I asked for their thoughts about the #crimingwhilewhite phenomenon from a couple of years ago when thousands of white people took it upon themselves to share online, actions they committed over the years without so much as any rough treatment by police. One I read said they even received a friendly police escort home to ensure their safety.  This person had been drinking!   Many of these personal stories included eyewitness accounts of seeing their black friends get treated like criminals for some of the same behavior, or simply “looking suspicious”. 

Another was a Facebook friend who took it upon himself to create a mini #crimingwhilewhite list on his own page, asking for his fellow white friends to share examples of their privilege, beginning with himself.  The list was long and their empathy great.

Then I asked my discussion partners for their opinions about the fact that many police officers, public officials, and even some conservative republican politicians, are admitting that there is racial bias against blacks (men especially) and that racism is indeed institutional and systemic to our society.  No matter how subtle or non-existent (because they are not on the receiving end) it may seem in the minds of some.

In their responses and attempts to discount most of what I’d shared, (and there were many) none of them ever acknowledged the situations I’ve listed above.  

Not. One. Single. Person.

Not even a response of disagreement or dismissal.  

Maybe they didn’t see them?  Maybe they did but simply believed that those individuals made it all up.  

So all those #crimingwhilewhite contributors, cops, public officials (one a governor) and conservative political leaders (who aren’t exactly known for being too publicly vocal about racial discrimination issues) simply lied. For what?

What would they have to gain by going to all that trouble? When it comes to police officers releasing info about the racist attitudes and treatment they see, it means putting their careers in jeopardy.

During these chats, it's common for some to request we end the conversations after I’ve shared the above info.   

Maybe because the facts don’t fit the narrative they’ve been conditioned to believe, they refuse to engage?

It looks as though many have convinced themselves, and attempt to do so with people of color like myself, that it’s best to just move forward, pretend our country’s racist founding never happened, (or that it wasn’t that bad) come together, and stop being so divisive.  Or, stop playing the race card.  

Tactics used in an attempt to silence us.  To those statements, I ask what (or who) is really at the root of this division? Who created that deck of cards in the first place? 

I do find it interesting that we are never encouraged to forget and move on from the terrorist attacks of 9/11.  In fact, the very slogan for that terrible day is “Never Forget.”

Why are brown and black people expected to just let go of the past and move on when it comes to the atrocities committed against us by our own country, yet not those that are perpetrated against the U.S. by others? 

In my opinion, if it’s so essential to study and remember the events in our history like the terrorist attacks of 9/11, World Wars I and II, and many others (which I believe is indeed necessary), then we should also with just as much determination, acknowledge and work together to dismantle systems of oppression, which have their foundations in white supremacy. 

Pretending these problems don’t exist will ironically keep us trapped in these realms of divisiveness that many say are caused by people like myself and others who refuse to stay silent, no matter how emotionally uncomfortable it gets.

So yes, if anyone out there can present logical explanations or answers to my questions on these issues, I’m all ears. Seriously.

See links below for more info.

The NYPD Officers Who See Racial Bias in the NYPD: The Atlantic

Police officer Nakia Jones' response to the killing of Alton Sterling

Anabaptist Author Benjamin L. Corey on why we're still unwilling to admit systemic racism in America

College Professor Steve Locke's experience with racial profiling while on his way to getting a burrito before work at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Sen. Tim Scott, republican from South Carolina, shares that during his time as a government official, he's been stopped by law enforcement seven times in the course of a year

All houses matter: The extended cut (comic)

All lives matter: With some exclusions (comic)

What the data really says about police and racial bias: Vanity Fair Magazine

Renowned astrophysicist Neil diGrassi Tyson on racial profiling

Actor Omari Hardwick's response to Rudy Guiliani's comments on BLM and why Black kids are killing each other

Of bias and why it matters that you know yours: By blogger Juli Taylor


                        Documentary: White Like Me with Tim Wise

  

Professor Tricia Rose: Brown University

How Structural Racism Works