says one officer, “it makes a little more sense as to why you’re walking around this area.”
Ricky then shows just the slightest crack in his Buddha cool, and points out that the cop had pulled out his hotel card.
“Isn’t that the whole point of searching me?” asks Ricky. “To get information?”
“You’re not in handcuffs. We’re just talking to you.”
“Why would I be in handcuffs? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You’re acting really defensive.”
And then Ricky tells the truth: “Do you know how many times I’ve been messed with by the cops because I’m black?”
“Oh, no no no no,” says a cop, as the others shake their heads. “Come on now.”
Yes, come on now. There was an assumption of guilt because of his very identity, and Ricky had to convince these men that he was innocent. The police stopped him as a reminder of the power structure Ricky is supposed to enforce upon himself: he should know that his skin puts him under constant surveillance and that his very presence outside of sanctioned spaces creates the assumption of wrongdoing. It is, in fact, an inconvenience to the police that they have to be bothered to tell him this. By now, as adults, Ricky and I are supposed to have internalized these rules and regulations that come with our very existence. We put on the mittens, we utter singsong hellos, and we stay where we belong.
I cut through the little field at the park that day. If someone had stopped me and I had to try to explain my moves, why I opted to go through the park, why I came across these children, why I was sliding through the mud . . . if I had tried to explain myself, I might have sounded crazy, but really all I would have been explaining away was the presence of my body in a space where it has been decided that black bodies are violent and threatening.
Worse, I am told that people don’t want to hear these stories, but the reality is we experience life in a never-ending loop in which we are told that if we just “make it,” we will enjoy the fruits of our labor: assimilation. My father tried so hard, but he was pulled out of his Mercedes at gunpoint in Pleasanton on his way to work in a suit. The police said they were looking for an escaped convict from nearby Santa Rita Jail. My father was a middle-aged man who looked nothing like the convict except for being black. There was no neighborhood outcry or protest. No one came to his defense. It was a necessary “inconvenience” for maintaining the safety of the neighborhood.
But what does that say about aspirational living? Hey, you moved into a big house and you made it . . . except you didn’t. There’s this idea that you will be safe if you just get famous enough, successful enough, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, move into the right neighborhood, do all these things to fully assimilate into the America people have been sold on. We all bought in, and we keep thinking if we just get over this mountain of assimilation, on the other side is a pot of gold. Or maybe a unicorn, perhaps a leprechaun. Any of those is as plausible as the acceptance of the wholeness of me. But there’s just another mountain on the other side. And someone will be ready to tell you, “Don’t be breathing hard. You need to make this look easy.”
Just as the cops were annoyed when Ricky said he had been repeatedly stopped because he is black, discussion of race is often dismissed or talked over unless it is in a sanctioned space. You can talk about your experience at a roundtable on race, but don’t talk about yourself at a “regular” roundtable. It is exactly the same as when I would challenge my friends in Pleasanton near the end of high school. “That again?” they would say. “Get off your soapbox.” Only now these are grown-ups who fashion themselves as allies. But these are my stories; this is what I have lived. I know what the boys I raise go through, what my husband goes through, and beyond my family, I can watch a video of it happening to Ricky. Each of us experiences these “same things,” but each experience has value and deserves telling. I need to write them and read them aloud to constantly remind myself of my reality. I