Today, I witnessed racism first hand. The best thing about it? I confronted it.
The worst thing about it?
It was me that did it.
But what a lesson it was. And I appreciate each and every moment of serendipity this day brought me (and I owe my boss about an hour or two of pay).
So…….I’m in the middle of nowhere in southern Wisconsin. I mean nowhere. Poor cell reception and all. Felt like a Sprint customer circa 2000. I pull over on some country road to review my notes before I begin social working people. As I sat there in total solitude, an old, rusty, beat up van pulls up next to me. Driving the van was a disheveled looking black man, and I had no idea what he wanted from me.
I’m embarrassed to say that I was startled by him, and as I did a double take, I’m ashamed to admit that I briefly felt a sense of fear in me. As I looked through my window, I could see that he was trying to ask me something. I could tell that he was repeating a question, and that question was: “Are you ok?”
Gathering my thoughts, I smiled and mouthed back, “haha, I’m good!”, and I could see him mouth “ok!” as he drove away.
I sat in my parked car for about 20 minutes and processed the events of the immediate past, and I began to ask myself “why?”
Why did I get scared?
Why was I relieved when he drove away?
Why did his skin color affect my perceptions in the interaction?
I felt I owed this man an apology for my reaction.
Soooooo, I spent an hour trying to find him. I drove in every direction, on every road within ten miles, through a construction zone, and on one grassy/dirt road. After 60 minutes, I gave up. There would be no finding him and no apologizing to him.
Or so I thought…..
I decided to just park in an intersection and wait for him to, perhaps, return to the spot where I last saw him.
I kept asking myself “how the hell am I gonna start this conversation?” I even practiced a bit, talking out loud and running through scenarios like a freshman social work student.
I waited in the intersection for about 45 minutes, roughly one UPS truck, one FEDEX truck, and a US mail truck.
And then he returned.
As I waved my hands at him to stop, he slowed down and pulled up next to me.
“I’m sorry that I acted afraid of you” was what I ended up blurting out, followed up by “I needed to say thanks and that I was sorry….you were being a kind person who just endured the worst in me, and you’re probably sick of that response from people.”
We talked on that road for almost an hour.
Two strangers at an intersection of a back country road. Talking about race, and fear, and our country, and civil rights, and racism, and the future, and love, and hope, and family, and dreams.
This man….this wonderful man, I learned, has several advanced degrees, plays violin, is well-read….and I totally assumed he was something he wasn’t, based on my fear of him. Based on ME.
Today, I chased down a black man so that he could teach me a lesson I thought I already learned. A lesson I should have already learned.
Good things…..