Something happened to me last week I need to share with you. I was in an upscale apartment complex here in my hometown area, Greater Seattle, WA….I was trying to find an apartment address and the addressing scheme of the layout of the complex was making NO sense to me…I could not find the apartment I was looking for.
I realized I needed help, and spied a young man, somewhere between age 16 and maybe 20, in the carport, working on a car – hood up, tools laid out on the ground and in the engine compartment, leaned way over with his arms nearly up to his elbows in his work.
I walked up behind him and asked what seemed like a relatively friendly, innocuous question: “Excuse me young man, do you live here?” At that point something happened that I did not intend and that surprised the hell out of me.
This young fellow whirled around and put his hands half way up in the air, as if he half expected to be arrested. It was then I realized he was African American. He began to stammer out “no, I don’t live here.. I’m just trying to fix my sister’s car…she lives here…over there in building C… and she can’t afford to take the car to a mechanic so I’m just trying to help her out..I am just here working on the car, honest….”
And then I saw something. Something in his eyes I hope I NEVER see again. Not hate. Not anger. Not even annoyance.
Fear. Genuine, holy-shit fear.
He had a look as if this middle+aged white guy was challenging him, challenging his right to be there, challenging his right to even exist, and was going to pull a gun, or at the very least call the police, at any moment.
I was absolutely stunned. So much so that I could barely state my business. I asked if he knew how to find a certain apartment and when he said no, I thanked him and walked away, so choked up I couldn’t stand it.
Long story short, I found the address and concluded my business there. When I drove away, I made another circle around the parking lot to where he still was in the carport. I rolled down my window, let him know that I had found the address, thanked him for his time and apologized for distracting him from his task. A look of relief flooded in on him and his whole face lit up as he smiled.
I NEVER want anyone to feel afraid of me at first sight (unless they are dating one of my daughters, but that’s another story) and I learned something that day:
I have been white all my life, (believe it or not). I have known, interacted with, worked for or with literally tens of thousands of white people. Maybe hundreds of thousands. The number of honest-to-God actual racists I have personally known has been less than a dozen. And not all the racists I have known were white. As such, I have felt very conflicted about all the racial tensions that are being so loudly protested these days.
HOWEVER
I have never had to measure my words carefully so they would not be considered threatening.
I have never had to explain myself in such a way that a supposed authority figure would leave me alone.
I’ve worked on cars in parking lots before and NEVER had anyone challenge me.
I would not, (because I have never needed to) interpret “Excuse me, do you live here?” as a challenge to my right to be doing what I was doing.
I would not have been frightened if someone came up behind me and asked me that.
And that is the definition of White Privilege.
So thank you, anonymous Black amateur mechanic – good Samaritan for a needy sister’s ailing vehicle – for inadvertently teaching me a lesson. I am very sorry that history has made your behavior feel so necessary. I can only hope that as you grow older your fear does not distill into hate, as it is so prone, in all of us, to do.
I go forth from your presence humbled, and with a whole new understanding.