Post 78 - May 28, 2020
Day 78…
When I was five, my mother, sister and I went to live with my Grandfather in South Africa.
Apartheid was in full force.
Black Africans were not allowed to live in white communities unless they had a passbook.
My Grandfather had several people working for him - a housekeeper named Maude and a gardener named Bennett.
Behind my Grandfather’s house were the kiyas, or huts, where Maude and Bennett were allowed to stay, courtesy of their passbooks, for most of the week. Their actual homes were out of the center of town. Out of sight on the other side of a hill, in an area called Location.
The kiyas had no windows and no electricity or plumbing.
Kerosene heaters kept them warm and an outhouse took care of their other needs. I think that there were floors in the kiyas - I have a memory of worn linoleum - but I wouldn’t swear to it.;
Maude and Bennett had worked for my Grandfather for decades. When Maude became too old and finally retired, her daughter Agnes, took over her job.
Agnes had a son named Jabulani who was four or five years older than I was.
Bennett had a son named N’Kosinkulu who was two years older than my sister, and one year younger than me.
My sister and I grew up with the two of them.
I went to school down at the bottom of the road where we lived, and Jabulani and N’Kosinkulu went to school in Location, several miles away.
After school, we all played together.
I have a very vivid memory of playing with Jabulani one afternoon.
I had a lot of toy Corgi cars - kind of like a British version of Matchbox cars. I still have one of them - a Landrover. I also had a bunch of other much cheaper plastic cars.
One afternoon, Jabulani suggested that he could make one of those cheaper cars run on its own, but he’d need to make a hole in the side of it.
I readily agreed.
The car was light blue plastic and completely hollow inside. The wheels were two slag metal spool-shaped things that clicked into grooves in the plastic underneath.
Jabulani started drilling into the side of the car and found it harder going than he thought it would be. He had gotten about halfway through the project when I turned on him.
I wailed into the house that Jabulani had ruined my toy.
Yes, I had given my full consent to the operation, but it didn’t matter. He had ruined my toy car.
I KNEW that I would be believed.
I KNEW that Jabulani would not be able to defend himself.
I knew all of this because I had more power than he did, even though I was younger.
I knew my whiteness meant something more than his blackness did.
I was SIX and, somehow, I already knew this.
I also knew it was wrong.
The shame I felt at watching Jabulani being punished for something that was not his fault has etched that memory into my psyche and I have never forgotten it.
Years later, I saw Athol Fugard’s play “Master Harold” and the Boys on Broadway and there it was again.
Fugard wrote a play about a boy whose Mother owns a tea shop. The story recounts his relationship with the two middle-aged black men who work for his mother and who, basically, raised him.
Hallie, the “Master Harold” of the title, turns on his friends in the end, unleashing the vicious racism that he has learned from his father.
He also does it, knowing what he is doing.
Two days ago, Amy Cooper, did exactly the same thing in Central Park.
She was in the wrong.
Her dog was off its leash in an area where dogs are required to be leashed and when asked, politely, to put the leash back on by a black man, she called the police.
Christian Cooper, the man in question, started filming the encounter.
She gets on the phone to the Police and KNOWING that they will believe her word over the word of a Black man, pitches her voice higher and pretends that she is in distress.
Mr. Cooper stays calm and even throughout.
She makes the call, fully knowing what the result will be.
Christian Cooper will be blamed, and she will be protected.
As a white middle-class woman, she can do whatever she wants, even if it’s against the rules, and she will be believed.
She doesn’t think this. She KNOWS this.
We have, by now, all watched George Floyd be killed by a white policeman in Minneapolis.
The policeman asphyxiated him by kneeling on his neck.
We are all at home watching TV during a global pandemic - it was hard to miss.
George Floyd is handcuffed and not resisting, begging for his life and the white policeman, Derek Chauvin, does not stop.
George Floyd dies in front of our eyes.
All of us have now seen black George Floyd die at the hand of a white Derek Chauvin many times over and, even so, there is an extremely good chance that that white Derek Chauvin will get away with it.
White Derek Chauvin still hasn’t even been charged with any wrongdoing.
African Americans constitute about 13% of the population of the United States.
African Americans currently account for about 23% of the deaths from coronavirus.
Are African Americans more susceptible to the coronavirus?
Not genetically, no.
African Americans are more susceptible to COVID-19 than white Americans because white Americans have better access to everything from information to resources.
Last August, there was a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
White supremacists and neo-nazis and Ku Kux Klan members marched to oppose the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and to unify the white nationalist movement.
A white supremacist rammed his car into a group of counter-protestors, killing one and injuring 19 others.
The Governor, Terry McAuliffe, declared a state of emergency.
The President’s response to this was to say that there were “very fine people on both sides.”
At six years old, I was able to take in the behavior of the society around me and act accordingly.
At six, I was not making a judgement call, I was just acting in a way that I knew would work.
The actions of those around us, particularly those people we have chosen to represent us, send us all the signals we need to live our lives.
It doesn’t matter what they say, it matters what they do.
Kids growing up now, are taking all of this in.
You can talk about the evils of racism all you want.
Nothing is going to change until the behavior of those in charge changes.
If Derek Chauvin is not tried and convicted of murder, then there is nothing whatsoever that is going to stop this from happening again.
The signal will be sent, again, that it is OK to kill a black man.
Somebody else’s father, cousin, friend, brother is going to die at the hands of a white man.
The white man will end that black person’s life knowing that there will be no repercussions at all.
Forget mask-wearing.
The President has already, through his actions, told the entire country that they don’t need to do that.
This is murder we are talking about. The entire country is being sent the signal that it is OK for white people to kill black people.
And black people are, indeed, dying at the hands of white people.
How many black Americans do we bury before we get it?
It has to stop.
WE have to stop it.
We MUST hold our elected officials accountable for this.
We are all going to behave the way we see others behave.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to Derek Chauvin, but Amy Cooper has lost her job and had her dog taken away from her.
Good.
It’s a start.
We’ve still got a long way to go.
If we want our six year old kids to act honorably, we are going to have to start doing that ourselves.