The Beach

The children had run ahead of us to the beach. We were still lagging in the dunes with our bag full of towels and a sun shade. When we got to the beach, we saw where the children had left their flip-flops, so they could run down to the water. It was low tide, so it took us a while to find them jumping in the waves.

Vacationing near water is in these children’s DNA – from their mother’s, it goes back to swimming in Austrian lakes all summer and from their father’s side, it comes from escaping to breezy Atlantic sandy beaches from the urban summer heat.

Us parents looked for an ideal spot on one of these favorite Carolina beaches of ours that we had tried to come to at least once a year, ever since we were parents. 

That is when we noticed all the black families.

We had been parents for almost fifteen years. In our fifteen years coming to the beach, this was the first time we noticed black people on our beaches. Black couples, black children, black families.

A few months after my beach experience, this was the cover of the New Yorker.
Coincidence?

It caught us off guard. 

Yes, it caught us off guard. We were used to seeing only white people at the beach. White people, trying to get a little darker with a tan. White couples, white children, white families. All getting darker as the week at the beach passed. Until right now, black people were only seen a little bit inland from the coast – working at the stores or selling local produce at stands or working in the restaurants. But never at the beach.

It caught us off guard that there were black people all of a sudden and even more it caught us off guard that we had actually never realized that although black people lived all along the coast, they never went to the beach and we never realized that they were missing from the beach.

One hundred years ago, my great great great grandfather in Austria sold off some land for very cheap to the first buyer interested. It was water-front property on a pristine lake and totally useless to him at the time when people wore about five layers of clothes and never showed even forearm skin in public.  Five to six generations later, we kick ourselves that that wealthy man didn’t have the foresight that that land would be prime property for tourism development, or for his own middle class descendants, who would love a private beach front to lounge around on or dock a boat from.

It would have been easier, if we were whites in the South. Had my great great great grandfather made the mistake, say, of selling seemingly useless beach front land to his former slaves 100 to 150 years ago, and descendants a few decades had later realized the potential value of such beach front property for tourism development, well, those descendants, also my grandparents, could have easily bought back the land at a low price or, if the black folk didn’t accept that, the white folk could have scared these black land owners away from their property with death threats, and then bought it from them for really cheap. My ancestors didn’t have that option for lake front property in Austria.

So, when vacationing in Austria, I just share a public beach with other common folk. I do the same when vacationing on public beaches in the Carolinas; but now, about fifty years after the Civil Rights movement, it seems I have to get used to the fact that the common folk on the beach will also start to include people with black skin – the kind that is dark before it even tans.

Well, if all that bothers me, I can go to my suburban neighborhood pool here in the South East USA, where membership is exclusive to paying neighbors, neighbors of this all-white part of town, who two generations ago during the civil rights movement created neighborhood pools so they wouldn’t have to share public pools with people with black skin – you know the kind that is dark even before you get a tan.

Knackwurst

His big hands make smooth but firm movements. He uses his hands for work, but the white fingernails at the tip of his long fingers are clean, neat, and pearl of mother, a color my nails turn to only after a four week vacation on the beach with plenty of time spend in the ocean. He gesticulates with a fluid but determined manner. His broad shoulders support the unwavering arm and hand movements. He is standing on slender but muscular legs, with pants wrapped around them tightly, but not too tightly, just enough to showcase his athleticism. The wide brown line down the pants enhances the strength of his legs, which he barely moves although he is surrounded by chaos. He probably sports that leather belt just to highlight the zero grams of fat around his waste, because his tight buns definitely keep his pants in place. The beige of his uniform is drab and nothing near elegant, but it goes well with his dark skin. The jaded tone actually accentuates the gloss of his smooth skin, which makes him seem even more in control of this situation, where despite the heat, no sweat is trickling down his face – it is merely glistening. He has big feet, and his shoes are shined to perfection. His bald head is tasteful and despite it rebellious origins, it screams “maturity”– white men can’t pull off bald heads with such elegance. His head is covered with a wide rimmed safari like hat, which renders the exact dose of authority that you can calmly trust. Just like a cowboy, he doesn’t need sunglasses. He looks with his healthy eyes straight into mine. I am smitten, not sure what to do or think, frozen in my place waiting to see what will happen next. His eyes are now wide open staring into mine and his jaw is a little tense…

“MOMMMYYYY! – wake up! The sheriff is getting impatient with your daydreaming and wants you to drive on so traffic can move on! Can’t you see?”

Learn More and Earn More

“Learn more and earn more!” ? How many educated housewives, artists, philosophers and teachers are there who make no money? This man was not speaking to an educated elite of privilege. This man was speaking to fifty fifth graders of a low-income neighborhood school. Statistically, their future was not too promising.

He continued shouting, “ I am telling you, it is not a pretty sight to see the face of Yo’ Mama when she visits you in prison and you are wearing an orange jump suit!”. This was a tall slender African American man, dressed elegantly in a dark blue two-piece suit and shiny matching shoes. He had long artistic hands that he gesticulated sparingly along with his harshly direct yet eloquent speech. He knew what he was doing. He knew his target audience.

“How many of you have younger siblings? Come on, raise your hands!” he commanded loudly. “Can they read? Huh? Can they not read? Well, it is your job to make sure they can read! You know why? Because if your siblings can’t read by third grade, they will start building more prisons for your siblings!”

“They” – he never explained who “they” was, but the target audience obviously knew intuitively what this man was talking about. “They” were at the family center across the street, “they” were at school sometimes, “they” patrolled in police cars, “they” were all over hovering by ….

I happened to hear this speech because I was part of a set of parents of students who were by default bystanders of this speech.  Our children were sharing a fifth grade graduation ceremony and the space with the target audience. The neighborhood school building co-houses a so-called magnet program with enriched academics, of which the purpose is to attract students and families from all over the county to add diversity in the form of academic achievement, skin color and socio economics to the neighborhood demographics. In that respect, the magnet is successful – it attracts diversity. Whether it manages to allow organic mixing of the neighborhood students with the magnet students is still a work in progress. Fact is: the principal felt compelled to find a graduation speaker who would talk a slither of hope for opportunity into the neighborhood students’ minds. She didn’t need to worry about a pretty speech that would satisfy the parents of the academically enriched students. She had a more acute message to deliver before everyone ran off for the summer.

“So you don’t want to go to jail and you don’t want your baby siblings go to jail, so make sure you and they can read.” He paced briefly silently across the stage with his head down, as if to recover some energy before turning back to the audience looking them intently in the eyes.

“And you want to make money, don’t you? We all want to make money, right? And how do you make money? Well, stay out of jail first. And then: stay in school! And you know how you earn more money? You stay in school longer!”

“So I want you to repeat after me: Learn more and earn more! Learn more and earn more! Learn more and earn more!”

He didn’t stop until he was satisfied with the power of the chorus.

Later I asked my son who was sitting in the crowd of fifth graders graduating, whether he knew what the speaker was talking about. He shrugged his shoulders and commented, “You know it wasn’t for us, it was for them”.

At only ten, he knew there was a “us” and “them” based on academics and neighborhood status. I just hoped he wasn’t aware of skin color yet. And I also secretly hoped he didn’t grasp the message of the speaker; I hoped for naïve innocence in my ten year old. On the other hand, I cried for the apparent loss of innocence in the target audience. The loss of hope for opportunity.

But maybe the speaker was able to hammer some hope into their heads at this crucial fork in the road: summer. Summer, where the magnet students would be spoon-fed nurturing opportunities and where the neighborhood students would face choices that could alter their lives in bad ways.

Despite the figures of authority in these little people’s lives, such as the Principal who offer love, ideology, idealism, the ultimate choice at that critical moment when they are all alone, will be theirs.

The tall elegant man pleaded one more time, “Repeat after me: learn more and earn more!” Then he raised his voice even more and concluded by making them promise to graduate high school and not join a gang over the summer.

Later that day, as I was still trying to digest the power of his speech, I found out he was a newscast on a prominent TV channel. I spend the rest of the day hoping those kids watch TV, find this elegant man a person to look up to and that his words will reverberate in them throughout the summer - especially in that moment when they stand alone at a big fork in the road.

Gifted

It is cold up North. I would need to buy a coat if I moved up there, but I don’t have the money for that. Maybe I could buy good gloves and a hat instead. But what do I do if it snows? I don’t even know what snow feels like, or how to walk on it, or what shoes to buy. What am I thinking?

“Thanks for showing me all this and explaining how to apply, but I have a great part-time job here in Charlotte, so I think I won’t really apply to the Ivey Leagues up North. I don’t want to give up my job, you know….” I answered the school counselor after she spend an hour showing me glossy brochures about different schools she really wanted me to apply to, because they were going to be my path to glory.  I tried to stay calm and give a rational answer. But honestly, I was scared, scared shitless.

I saw the disappointment in her eyes. She felt my resignation. She knew it was not about the part-time job only, but she couldn’t put her fingers on all the other reasons that kept that pipe dream from becoming a potentiality on my radar. I never shared all the burdens of the rest of my life with her. She had only witnessed my ambition, my excellence with standardized tests, my challenging questions to teachers, my endless curiosity, my never satiated hunger for knowledge. She knew – merely based on the dark color of my skin - that I had overcome obstacles, but how would she – with her tender light skin - know what they were? I never bothered to begin to explain them to her or anyone. It was too complicated and at the time, even I didn’t know how to put them all down in words and sentences. I focused on everything else instead. In her -and the likes of her- presence I had always been my best opportunity-embracing self.

But, at that moment, my stomach felt the same way it did back two years ago when I found out my mother had to pawn off the violin to pay some utility bills. I wasn’t playing it anymore, because my new school didn’t have an orchestra or classical music instruction, but that violin – sitting unused at home - had become my token to a path that would take me to new places, new worlds, away from my small muggy world filled with bumps in the road, and into worlds of passion combined with endless opportunity. Away from a place where TV and occasional fast food indulgence were a solace to some, to a place and time where men with wild hair and even wilder minds had the luxury of filling their lives expressing every little desire or petty distraction with instruments flying, banging and fluttering up and down octaves of scales in harmony with dozens of other string, wind or brass instruments.

That little memory of an escape had to be taken away from me to make it through the monthly budget. Similarly, now, I realized my whole reason for pushing and ploughing to get ahead was facing a major road block. All the little burdens I had been in denial about, showed up unannounced as a cumulative force right then. And for the first time ever, I just didn’t have the strength to step over them all piled up right there in front of me.

A price of a winter coat, my mother’s utility bills, Greyhound tickets back and forth, the education of my 8^th grade sister, the overbearing preaching pastor hovering over the household void of a father, the neighborhood boys preying over my younger siblings.

I had to forego the best education for myself, because I had a conscience and a love like a mother hen over her vulnerable chicks. I couldn’t leave and expose my chicks to the dangers all around. I had to go to college in town. That I would do.

Police Stops

Police Stops

Cute and White

“I didn’t stop you for crossing the yellow light; you know that, right? Do you know what I stopped you for?”, asked the police officer sternly. He was young, medium height, clean-shaven and despite his authority, a slight politeness seeped through. As is protocol, he was standing a little bit behind my driver-seat window that I had opened. I had to turn my head back to answer him.

“No sir, I don’t know why”, I said with honesty.

“Well, I spotted you a few blocks away and you did not stop at the stop sign,” he explained.

“Oh, um, yeah… “ I started but then snapped sharply, “Yes, Sir!” as I remembered that useless stop sign at the insignificant intersection, where I rarely encounter other vehicles.

“I am sorry”, I added although I knew that was a pointless statement vis-à-vis law enforcement.

He bent over to hand me back my drivers’ license and peeked into the back row of my car. He already knew I was white, probably middle class - but due to the beat up nature of my car, he probably didn’t know where on the class spectrum – then he saw the baby in the five-point harness babyseat and the 96 year-old great-grandmother, both strapped still and patiently waiting.

His tone changed to become soft and he concluded,

“Ma’am, next time you drive by here, make sure to make a full stop at the stop signs.  Have a good day.”  I never received a ticket. Not even a warning. I got away carte blanche, as white as my skin.

Cute and Black

Stomping all over my Lenten roses, they destroyed a few. I had just planted them last fall to add some flavor to my shady back yard and a dash of color at the end of winter, when the rest of the vegetation is drab or dormant, and, while eagerly anticipating spring, the delicate pedals of the blooms offer a gentle sense of renewal.

Oh well, I had readily let in the three police officers to search the escaped man. It must have been serious, with the helicopter and that powerful searchlight hovering above.

I loved my new bungalow – modest, but perfect, and, above all, all mine – in this transitional part of town, where criminality still existed but was becoming more petty, and where urban pioneers, such as I, purposely moved in to change things for the better. The price for owning the cutest bungalow in all of Atlanta was occasional knocks on the door by police, as well as my neighbors’ and my vigilance and cooperation with law enforcement. This was my stake in protecting a historic neighborhood from gentrification.

“Ma’am”, the police officer concluded as he stomped his feet on the sidewalk at the end of the search, “ Thanks for letting us in. Nothing to be seen. All is clear and we are done.  We are done with work, but may a decent brother like me take a cute dark sister like you out to dinner next Tuesday evening?”

It took me a while to gather my bearings at this question. Acting dutifully to law enforcement was easy. But a question of the romantic sort was not on my radar screen. Normally always on point for a powerful rebuttal, now I was at a loss.

Sure, a man in a uniform provides some sort of authoritative comfort, but right now, I was not in a state to envision what sort of clothes this police officer might look good in off duty. I didn’t have time or any interest to let my imagination meander to good looks at this moment. Anyways, I typically liked men who shared the books, history and political articles I read, or the documentaries I watched; they usually did not wear uniforms on or off duty.

Heck, I had just furnished my little house and was excited to invite my all-girl book club and show them my cozy living room, my female bath room. My house was all girly. There was no room for a big screen TV or recliner that this dude was most likely accustomed to. And anyways, after all I had been through, and now when I had finally found a sweet calm spot all to myself, I did not need a partner in my life whose job was filled with adrenaline, odd hours, danger and possibly death.

I knew I had to respond to this man without sounding even remotely arrogantly intellectual, so I pulled my rational brain together to provide a non-offensive and calm answer.

“Sir, thank you for your offer, but at this point in time, I wish to enjoy being single”.

The officer clicked his heals, made a slight bow, did an about turn, said, “Good ev’ning, Ma’am” and the three officers left promptly and drove off in their blinking vehicles.

I was baffled at how easy it was for a black girl to reject a police officer.

Or so I thought.

A few minutes later, I saw through my kitchen window how the blinking vehicle was back in front of my house. The officer came out of the car and I opened my front door to find out what was the matter.

“Ma’am, just for your information, in response to your clear indication of a lack of cooperation in future affairs, I must inform you that, counter-actively, we are no longer able to respond to your calls to the police station and reports on criminal activity in this neighborhood”.

And that sure as hell became the case. The entire staff of the police station abided by his whimsical threat. All that, because I had declined to go on a date with a police officer. And for weeks, I could feel this officer’s dark skin pulling my black skin further into this blacks’ black hole of rejection and constant self-defense.

The trodden Lenten roses recovered beautifully amidst the entire patch, as would I. Happily and strongly single, I got my neighborhood to solidarize with me and we figured out a system to notify the police station anyways. Idiots.

Fast and White

The vehicle in front of me was very wide and wobbly. The car was driving the speed limit. But it was irritating me, so I decided to pull a New Yorker, and pass this car at least 20 mph above the speed limit on its left.

It was a typical suburban Southern road, where no one is in a hurry and the roads are wider than they need to be, where often politeness trumps law.

It took only five seconds, and a police car was flashing behind me. I turned into the next side road and stopped. The police car stopped behind me, the officer stepped out and walked towards my vehicle. I rolled down my window and immediately confessed to the blatant crime with a sad nod of the head.

The police officer stated the obvious – that I was driving 20 mph above the speed limit. But I was somewhat prepared: I had been through two years worth of immigration proceedings and scares, and so, I had perfected the neutral mono-syllabic answers that I always concluded with a sharp and respectful, “Sir!” The police officer took my drivers’ license and insurance papers to his vehicle.

My baby and I sat in the car silently waiting.

The officer came back a few minutes later, handed me my papers and said, “Ma’am, we are all good here, but next time you are around this road, stay within the speed limit and please go renew your drivers’ license, it has expired.”

“Yes Sir!” I blurted and rolled up my window.

Carte blanche again, again, as white as my skin. Or did the ponytail give me extra brownie points?

Not even fast and Black

Atlanta in August is not my favorite place to be: it is hot and muggy, not only just hot and muggy, but way too hot and muggy. That aside, I am so happy to meet up with my friends who flew in from out of town, to check out this Southern city, where I now live.

I am a little anxious to be tour guide and hope to show them the best of what the city has to offer, somewhat nervous that the heat will make us lethargic, or maybe the sweet tea too jittery.

The hotel they are staying at has a quaint little driveway along some drooping hydrangeas, despite the irrigation giving them daily hydration to survive the suckling evaporation. I follow the driveway, which is packed with parked cars. I see a police officer at the end of the driveway and as I approach it, I see he is gesticulating to me to move forwards. I abide, but when I get to the end of the driveway, he is still gesticulating to me to move forwards and he tells me something rather angrily. I do not hear what, so I roll down the window to ask a question, but he doesn’t give me a chance to ask; instead he nastily yells at me to get out of the car and hand over insurance and drivers’ license.

Not sure whether I was confused from the droning noise of the cicadas or if my brain was fried from the beating down sun, but I did not recollect doing anything wrong; I turned off my car anyways, stepped out and handed the white sweating police officer my papers. Disgruntled, he walked back to the police car, making me wait.

I waited for five minutes, stunned the entire time, the sweat by now not only trickling down my forehead but also drenching my cute shirt.

Finally, my three guests step out of the hotel, see and rush over to me, not wasting a second to give me embracing hugs of true friends. Our group hug, makes our cumulative skin tone blend to a light beige of a café latte – somewhat lighter than my own dark chocolate milk tone.

The police officer sees me disappear in my friends’ affectionate group hug reaching across races, and with a gesticulation of the hand, it appears he lets me go.

So, off we drive to our afternoon of partying in the big city. In my joy, I forget the incident.

The next morning, the ringing phone wakes me up.  It is the police officer. He lets me know he has my papers. Hung over not from alcohol but from a day and night of happiness, I click my brain back to the reality of the situation induced yesterday by this police officer. I try to stay rational, but merely from the after taste of how he handled me yesterday, I know his intent is to let out all the ugliness of his soul and try to destroy me.  For what reason, I am not sure; I can only think that the reason is my skin color.

He has my papers. He never returned them to me. I forgot to request them from him and I realize I was in a precarious situation driving around without papers.

When he summons me to come pick up my papers at the police station in a rural location two counties away, I realize my situation is still precarious, and acutely so.  He does not only want to insult me and dog me down emotionally, but it is clear his intent is to harm me physically also. Was he going to arrest me for driving without a license and then leave it up to my word against his? Was he going to rape me? Was he going to kill me? I can’t control my fear. This man scares me to the core.

I never heard of the location and looking on the map, it sure does look remote.

Luckily, I have enough friends who wouldn’t mind a 90-minute drive in my new snippy car. I call my friends from the hotel and two other local friends to provide me moral and, if necessary, physical support in dealing with the police officer. The out-of-town friends will enjoy a true Southern cultural country experience. My local friends are immediately on board, because they sense I am scared of the officer, even if I never verbalize it to them – I would never admit to that weakness.  

Yesterday, we had power in numbers, today would be the same!

Six adults squeeze into my car, we fill the tank, the co-pilot pulls out a map and off we drive to a set meeting time with the officer.

We reach the outpost when the sun is at its highest, the humidity somewhat suppressed by the rays beaming down vertically directly from the hot sun, but the intensity of the heat still makes the temperature miserable. It seems even the cicadas have lost some of their drone power.

We step out of the car. The police officer is waiting in his car, this outpost obviously not exactly his home territory. He is shocked to see me step out of the car with an entire entourage of strong, healthy and educated adults. Yes, instinctively, I profiled racially and selected my friends to make sure our skin tones represented a broad range of the black to white color spectrum.

The police officer sees us, steps out of his car and walks towards us. It is a dusty road. He is alone, pale and sweaty and even as he tries to make his chest larger, in volume, my group totally outweighs his sleezy self. I am upright, glistening and powerful amongst my support crew.

We barely exchange words, just the formal greetings. He hands me my papers, I smile, thank him, and we part. I am thankful and relieved at the ease of this transaction.

Again, the initial feelings of fear and anguish dissipate as soon I am back on the road heading home with my friends beside me, and I tell myself how my negative thoughts of fear are all mistaken.

Or so I believe.

A week later, I receive a summons in the mail for a ticket with the box checked that I failed to obey a police officer. I read it ten times to make sure I am not missing a word or misunderstanding something.

Standing by my mail box of the cute entryway to my idyllic home, studying the summons, I can smell the dusty road, hear the lame cicadas, taste the sweat on my upper lip, hear our steps crunch on the path towards the officer, see the pale officer’s face with his slight disappointment in his loss of control over a black girl, as I show up with my entourage. But, I failed to perceive that while he handed me over the papers, in what seemed an effortless motion, he was in fact planning revenge. Silly revenge.

I call to complain. But through the phone, although they don’t see me or my skin color and although my neighborhood friends have always teased me for sounding white, they know I am black. The police officer’s summons trumps my words – every day of the year, every year of the century that will be the case, because I am black and I am in the South. I hire a lawyer. It is futile.

Sadly, I resign, I pay the lawyer and pay the summons.

I learn to cope with it. Sometimes, I tell myself, at least I was not shot dead; it could have been worse. But then I hate myself for that sense of resignation that has been perpetuated across generations. Yes, as a child, I sang “Amazing Grace” in church alongside my parents and our black Baptist congregation, but as a teenager I vowed to be more pragmatic about my race’s condition. I don’t want to get through life singing about acceptance of my fate. I am the generation that is supposed to move us out of our vicious black hole and into equal footing and treatment. I am the kid who broke barriers, who took risks, studied and opened my mouth too much, who knows everything about both sides of the fence. But at the end of the day, my skin color is still that which characterizes me most.