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It’s nine o’clock Sunday morning. I
stop by Lowe’s, which is up the street from my
pseudo-bourgeois subdivision. I need light bulbs, the kind
that are environmentally friendly, industrial strength
Velcro to attach my girls’ three-feet tall Zoe puzzle to
their freshly painted wall, and an el-cheapo ceiling fan.
Lowe’s is virtually desolate; most Augustans are busy
preparing themselves for the eleven o’clock church service.
My children and I meander around the store dreaming about
home improvement projects that would make our lives better. |
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It’s
9:25. We are checking out at the self-checkout
station. I tell the kids to wait at the end of
the aisle while I pick up the ceiling fan. We
are ready to leave. However, what happens in the
next sixty seconds changes our morning, and
potentially our perspectives, completely. |
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It’s 9:25. We are checking out
at the self-checkout station. I tell the kids to wait at the
end of the aisle while I pick up the ceiling fan. We are
ready to leave. However, what happens in the next sixty
seconds changes our morning, and potentially our
perspectives, completely. A man pushing a cart filled with
long plumbing pipes and wooden strips of some sort decides
that we are in his way; we are not important enough for him
to stop- to wait. I sense the man come from behind me, and I
see these long projectiles sticking feet over the buggy. I
turn to my right to face him. I tell him, “If you can wait a
minute, we will be out of your way.” My children are waiting
for me at the end of the aisle. They need to move out of the
way, but there’s not a lot of space. The man raises his
voice and says to me in a hostile tone,
.:read more:. |
“They need to
get out of the way.” “Just wait a minute, I’ll move them,” I retort
standing with my ceiling fan box half-way off of the counter. He
won’t wait. He keeps pushing the cart. I drop the box back down, and
I turn to him. “Wait!” Without thought, I push his buggy- hard. All
of the PVC pipes and wood strips fling out onto the floor and onto
the counters to the right of us. I hear the silence you hear right
before a car wreck: you know, the calm you experience the moment
before two objects in momentum are about to crash. The man and I
collide physically and intellectually. Now, I am in his face and my
adrenaline is revving up at warp speed. The only thing that prevents
me from jumping all over him is his scream for the manager to call
the sheriff. Like most law abiding citizens, I am afraid of getting
in trouble with the police. However, my fear is compounded by the
fact that this man is a white man in Georgia, and he is yelling that
I just accosted him. I am African American. I am dressed down in
sweatshirt and old jeans. I am with three children and without a
husband. I am in a trouble that I may not be able to overcome.
I gather my children and leave the store anyway. Crying, the
children climb into the mini-van; they are not accustomed to
violence. I put the light bulbs, Velcro, and ceiling fan into the
back on top of the bags I have been meaning to drop off at Goodwill
for a month. I see the man at the front of the store. He’s calling
the police. I better not leave, I think. Instead, I pull the van up
to the front of the store, and I wait. I tell the kids everything
will be fine. Mom will not get into trouble for trying to protect
them. I try to sound confident, but I am nervous. Three squad cars
pull up. The man finally hangs up with the emergency dispatcher. He
tells the police that he feared for his life. He tells the police
that my children were being unruly. He tells the police that I hit
him. I say that he’s afraid because I am a black woman. I would not
ordinarily assign race to such a situation, but this time it seems
appropriate. The Latino cop intervenes; he’s upset that I begin to
make this a “black-white” thing. I tell one of the white cops that I
was trying to protect my children; the man’s buggy was getting too
close to my kids. The police decide to review the videotape of the
incident. Instantly, I think of the Rodney King video. I remember
how badly that verdict went. I call my brother, who works for the
police. He’s nervous, too. Although I continue to tell myself that I
was justified in my response, I know that the law and justice are
two different things.
The lead cop returns and talks to the man. I can hear some of what
he says. The cop tells the man that he did come very close to
hitting my children. I can’t make out the rest. The man asks, “What
happens now?” The cop tells him, “Nothing.” The cop comes over to
me. He tells me that there’s no case here, but he warns me to be
more restrained. People in the other aisle could have been hurt. I
think, as long as my kids were safe I don’t care. I say, instead,
“Thank you, officer.” I feel nauseated. I am still too upset to feel
vindicated. I am only relieved.
Later on that day after I had given a play-by-play account to each
of my friends and family, I began to mourn over what had happened to
me and to my children. My children had lost their innocence that
morning. The incident had made them feel less safe. They saw the
police as a foe and not a friend. They saw and heard a man
disrespect their mother. They saw their mother out of control. I, in
contrast, had been re-awakened to my status in this world. I do not
generally concern myself with how whites see me. I have lots of
degrees and a career that exempts me, or so I thought, from having
to worry about others viewing me as less than. Yet, this
inauspicious morning dredged out all of those old feelings of
inferiority. Was his rudeness and impatience caused by his
intolerance of racial, class, or gender differences? (I could not
imagine that he would have treated a white woman in the same
manner.) Or was he simply an ass and race, class, and gender played
no role in his poor behavior? Was the Latino cop right in asserting
that race had no part in this conflict? Why did the Latino cop feel
obligated to take race out of the discussion?
I have no answers. This encounter was too brief to draw any
meaningful conclusions about what really happened. The man and I
agreed on the facts of the incident, but we were worlds apart in our
interpretation of the event. I will never know why what started out
as a casual Sunday morning trip to pick up light bulbs turned into a
tussle over space. The man fought for the space to which he felt
entitled; I fought for a space in which my children could be safe.
Who was right? I believe I was, but, nevertheless, this incident
serves as a reminder for me to be on guard always. You never know
when someone else’s issues might come hurling toward you and
collide.
Dr. Seretha D. Williams, PH.D