When You Don’t Get the Window Seat

This post recalls an experience many of us have had. And lately, when I fly, I never get a window seat–my husband is on the aisle, me in the middle…

But I have memories of being in the window seat, traveling alone from the Midwest to California to see my grandchildren…watching the land drop away, the green fields of Iowa, the mountains of the west. And when flying to Chicago, the sight of Lake Michigan and the skyline so thrilling…beauty from the air.

But on this particular trip, the woman in the window seat kept the shade down EVEN DURING LANDING. Nothing to do, I told myself. This is America, where tolerance needs to apply in many situations. Just let it go, even if travel might make you cranky and eager to say “Don’t you want to look out at Chicago, watch us glide over this amazing city and land?” But I stay quiet, though on some issues, maybe I need to offer some words.

So when flying from the west coast to Chicago–I did do something.

I read a book. I read Ta-Nehisi Coates, BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME. 

And the truth…I will never be the same.  

BETWEEN THE WOLRD AND ME   begins…

And one morning while in the woods, I stumbled suddenly upon the thing, Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks and elms, And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves “between the world and me”...(those words) taken from a Richard Wright poem.

We all know Richard Wright. We read  NATIVE SON in high school. And in this particular poem, Wright comes upon the remains of a tar feathering/burning, only to grasp that his future might be the same. And Coates, writing this book to his son, leaps from the scene to the present day. Some things are now outlawed. Some are not.

This is a book about Coates’ fear for his black body. And for me, this book is a WINDOW on white privilege, on the impact of words that have come from my mouth: bad neighborhood, ghetto, white flight, gangs with guns and drugs, working the system…

SO WHAT ABOUT YOUR HISTORY, MY HISTORY…

Ask yourself what language you might unconsciously use to denigrate a group of people–and do it casually, like it’s really no big deal. Because it’s so a part of most of us we don’t hear it or see it.

In the past, the rhyme, Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, Catch a–the object of which was changed to tiger.  And if at any time I knew or even thought the original word, it horrifies me.

Blame our culture, inbred in daily living. Life without thought. Ignorance! Do we ever stop to ask ourselves why we say or once said…. these things? No. Did my white body prevent me from digging through decades of pre-judgment, from seeing clearly that some of my choices smacked of fear? Yes. And then finally I had to ask, why?  

Because it was ingrained by ancestors, forebears, the populace that came before me. They handed out a  well-crafted picture–just handed it over and said: “Here, believe this, because this is how it is for you and how it will always be.” Were they good, loving people? Maybe. Were they ignorant, the product of the times, the whispered words, the judgments. Definitely. Christians also. (Think of the election of Barak Obama and how those old tropes played out, sometimes disguised…but certainly there.)

FIGHT WHAT IS HANDED DOWN

Separation. Fear. Build a wall–don’t drive there after dark; don’t shop there. Don’t take the bus. My husband took the bus to college. NEVER an incident. So now our grandchildren might ask WHY NOT TAKE THE BUS? And since reading BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME, these phrases, these tossed off and accepted ideas that are still part of the nomenclature…they stand out in my mind like darts of poison.

But what can I do when my policeman relative used to toss it off casually–those Chicago neighborhoods, etc? I can try to understand, and he’ll claim experience, though that works on both sides–my black brother-in-law from South Africa, when he was still alive, saw the big picture. He was a physician, drove an expensive car, and thus was often stopped…DWB–driving while black.

AND WHAT DID I DO? 

I taught in a high school with a diverse population (one of the best things that ever happened to me). But regardless, this being something I could not help…I brought a few pre-conceived ideas with me, until my dear friend Linda M. helped wake me up. Her mantra: WE NEED TO SHARE THE LAND. Yes!

And not just share a dying neighborhood or a crumbling public housing building, which was often scorned by those who had so much more. Better to wake up, understand the economics, never make general assumptions. Try to discern WHY some things happened to others, whey they were blamed, despite their every effort to change things.  

My older daughter’s master’s thesis in Urban Planning examined the rationale behind housing projects in Chicago–many of which have been torn down, thank God, but some do still remain. I read portions of her reference books that pointed to a major fact: a human being needs to have a say, needs to identify with a dwelling, a doorway, a garden. That builds pride, leads to care. Pushed in one direction without agency of choice will present attachment. Ever read RAISIN IN THE SUN? Ever think about living in a building 20 stories high with no sunlight in the stairwell, one or two windows lighting your abode, and the inability to step outside on a deck or a patio, feel the sun on your face? Sounds a bit like a prison. It was.

Many of us believe we have struggled for safety. Coates writes: To survive the neighborhoods and shield my body, I learned another language consisting of a basic complement of head nods and handshakes. I memorized a list of prohibited blocks. I learned the smell and feel of fighting weather…I recall learning these laws clearer than I recall learning my colors and shapes, because these laws were essential to the security of my body.

Coates fears that someone will destroy his body, because he is black–and for no other reason. He  references the firm and physical discipline of his parents. The LESSON all black mothers and fathers teach their children: avoid the police when walking the streets. Be careful. Watch yourself. Your life depends on it.

DID YOU ONCE SEE THIS?

What thoughts went through your mind, Dear Reader, when you saw a black mother scolding her child in a store, or pulling that child toward her? Negative right? Now read this from Coates as he addresses his son:

Now I understood it all…black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made. That is a philosophy of the disembodied,of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them with all the moral authority of a protective racket. It was only after you that I understood this love, that I understood the grip of my mother’s hand. She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon the curb like bum wine. And no one would be brought to account…because my death would not be the falt of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of “race”…

Coates recounts his first trip to Paris, a joyful-sad experience for a man bursting from the historical bonds of American society. Sitting in a Parisian garden he writes: At that moment a strange loneliness took hold…It occurred to me that I really was in someone else’s country and yet, in some necessary way, I was outside of their country. In America, I was part of an equation–even if it wasn’t a part I relished. I was the one the police stopped on 23rd Street in the middle of a workday…I was not just a father but the father of a black boy. I was not just a spouse but the husband of a black woman, a freighted symbol of black love. But sitting in the garden, for the first time I was an alien, a sailor–landless and disconnected. And I was sorry I had never felt this particular loneliness before–far outside of someone else’s dream. 

Yes, we all have dreams. But they have to be ours. SHARE THE LAND, let others have their dreams without a catch. J Beckett says in his Goodreads Review of Coates’s book: The tears came because Coates, in a few pages, captured, exposed, unlocked and translated what so many people of color, so many frustrated and frightened parents, and so many disenfranchised and nomadic youth found so difficult to dictate and explain. For them, the feelings were there but the words simply would not come. I wept because Coates’ story was my story.. 

And part of Coates’ story is my story–it’s my inability to fully see and understand. I have a bigger window now on that story, even though what I saw was not my plane landing at O’Hare in Chicago, but the words on the page bright and vivid calling out to me. Read this book. Let me know if his words touch you also.

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