When I think about our enslavement in America, or the tragedies that plague us as a people, I often become very angry. Angry with our oppressors who show us no mercy. Angry with the contempt shown to us by those who want to be our overlords. Angry at how corrupt and vile this cesspool called America really is. I used to wonder how these people in the majority were able to keep us subjugated and oppressed for so long. I studied history long and hard but could find no reason for these people (Caucasians) to hate us the way they do. What did we ever do to them? The answer came back…nothing, nothing at all. So I would ask myself, “Why then are we in this fix? Is there some supernatural curse that has put us in this dire predicament?”
I sat down one day and examined my career in the business world. As I thought about it, I realized something. I realized that I had never worked a job where I had ever been treated fairly or paid fairly by White overseers. I am not saying that I have never been satisfied working a job for the “man”. But, I am saying, that I have never felt that I was ever treated in a fair and just manner. I could go into intimate details about my various ordeals: being fired twice (for no good reason) only to be reinstated, being paid half of what my junior Caucasian counterparts were making, and on and on, ad nauseam.
In spite of this treatment I have made friends with a number of White folk. However, in the main, I have always felt an uneasiness around most of them, except for those who struck me as honest and genuine. I have found that I usually get along better with new immigrants than with those Whites who have lived here in the States for a long period of time. You know, those who have not been around long enough to be deeply indoctrinated into this American way of life.
There is this thing I have found most odd in my experiences with most Caucasian males. Very few of them could ever look me straight in the eyes for any length of time without flinching or looking away. It was as if there was some kind of fear they had of me. When talking with them in conversation I would often look away to spare them of what I considered an almost innate fear of me. I don’t do that any more. But what was that all about? Who am I that they should be so fearful of me? This was a fear that had no rational basis. I am not a physically imposing person, so why am I so threatening to these people?
I remember my first professional job just out of college. Professional, what a tired, overused and meaningless word that is. Whenever I hear that word now I almost want to puke. But that’s another story for another time. Anyway, my first gig out of college was a job working as a tax auditor for the State of Tennessee. I was paired with a White male who was maybe 8 years my senior. His job was to train me in this new job. I will never forget our first day together. We rode around in his car to various business establishments and he introduced me to a number of people that I needed to know (since I would have to interact with these people on a frequent basis).
Anyway, as we were riding around, (this is October of 1979), he says to me, “You know Ray I sometimes use the word nigger so don’t be offended, because I believe anybody can be a nigger.” When he said this I was kinda caught off guard. But as I am process that moment in my mind, I think to myself, “Hmm, sure. Right, we can all be niggers. Great. That really makes me feel so much better.” Obviously the truth is that It didn’t. Anyway I have to admit I was a bit stunned by his honesty and by his gall. But I respected him for being truthful. You see, there are a whole lot of Whites who use the term nigger all the time but pretend that they are somehow offended by it when the public spotlight is on them. Or, some will even lie and say that they have never heard of the word. Show me a White person who has never heard or used this term and I will show you a liar.
“Nigger” is certainly no stranger to me. As the comedian, Paul Mooney, used to say, some people brush their teeth with that word. It’s just that common. However, I came to understand something. The word nigger is symbolic. It is an epithet and a metaphor for our lowly estate. I don’t get too hung up on the word any more because Nigger is just a byword—a word that describes our wretchedness as a people.
But why are Whites so fixated on that word and why do they feel this insane need to debase us as a people? If in fact they are so superior why do they spend so much time trying to prove their superiority. My sense has always been that they actually have an inferiority complex. But why? At that time I did not know why. Today, I understand it as well as it’s spiritual dimension.
I remember another time back when I was an auditor for the State of Tennessee, I was auditing the Petroleum Club of Memphis. This was supposedly a club for big wigs in the energy industry who wanted to network and socialize. Anyway, one day I was sitting in the foyer of this club in a 3-piece suit and tie, clutching a rather expensive briefcase, when a middle-aged white guy walked in. When he spied me sitting on this large couch he asked me if I could seat him and wanted to know where the rest rooms were. Now that was funny. Here I am sitting on the couch in a 3-piece suit with a briefcase and all I could ever be was a waiter…a waiter with an expensive briefcase. LOL!
The same sort of thing happened when I went to the Overton Square district on my very first solo audit for the State. I walked into a popular French restaurant down there. I was wearing the same professional get-up as before and I asked for the owner. The person I directed this question to just happened to be the owner. This fellow wheeled around and barely looking at me told me to sit down and shut up. I was taken aback at his rudeness, after all I had made an appointment to see him a week earlier.
I didn’t say a word, but pondered the situation. I looked around the place and I saw a number of brothas sitting around with job applications in their hands filling out some forms. Then it dawned on me. This guy thought I was there for an interview–looking for a job as a waiter or bus boy…in a 3-piece suit and tie (clutching a briefcase, mind you), but looking for some menial job in his pathetic restaurant.
He later confirmed that this was true after I abruptly got up and told him, “I don’t have time for this.” I told him I would catch him when he was less busy. I told him I was the auditor who called him the previous week. He was chagrined to say the least. Whether he thought I was interviewing for a job or not, there was no excuse for his crude behavior. But it just goes to show that the Dred Scott decision by the U.S. Supreme Court is alive and well…”black folk have no rights that white folk are bound to respect.1” For all practical purposes, I did not exist in his white world. I was invisible…a token that had to be tolerated. I am not bitter about any of these experiences. I mean after all there are many others who have faced similar and much worse experiences. But this is my story so I am telling it like it was.
1Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney wrote in the Dredd Scott Decision that the authors of the Constitution had viewed all blacks as “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”