Gregory Freeman: It's Up To Whites To Find Sensitivity In Color Reaction. PD 12/3/1993

Headline: IT'S UP TO WHITES TO FIND SENSITIVITY IN COLOR REACTION
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Tues., Dec. 3, 1993
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 5C, Edition: FIVE STAR

A BLACK ACQUAINTANCE recently described an incident that made him cringe.
   He and his wife had agreed to meet for lunch at a fancy hotel here. Arriving before his wife, he decided to wait for her at the hotel's entrance.
   As he waited for his wife, another car pulled up. Out stepped an older white woman. What happened next, he said, irked him tremendously.
   "She asked me to park her car, " he said. "She thought I was handling valet parking."
   He said he explained to her gently that he was not the valet. "She gave me kind of a puzzled look and then drove on, " he said.
   Outwardly, he said, he was calm. On the inside he was steaming.
   "The woman assumed that because I was black and standing in front of this nice hotel, that I must be the valet, " he said. "I'm still bothered by that."

A distressing incident, but not that unusual. Incidents like this happen to African-Americans on a regular basis.
On more than one occasion I've been asked to carry bags at a hotel. Once, while walking through a restaurant, I was asked by a patron if I would help clean a table where a glass of water had spilled.
I don't know how many times I've been followed in stores by white salespeople who, I assume, thought I was going to steal something.

That's an almost universal black experience.
Just Thursday, I heard a prominent black St. Louisan - a man who always dresses impeccably - tell of how he was standing in the checkout line at a store when a disheveled white woman who was ahead in line looked back at him and clutched her purse, as if he were going to steal it.
These are among the indignities many blacks are forced to suffer, 128 years after the end of the Civil War. Stereotypical assumptions make it difficult for many blacks - even the most accomplished among us - to ignore the issue of race.

I suspect most whites give little thought to their own skin color. Few probably go through life daily consciously aware that they are white.
   But being black in America means being constantly reminded of your skin color. For many of us, that means indignities on a far-too-regular basis.
   For many blacks, neither money nor social status makes a difference when it comes to these indignities.
   The acquaintance I mentioned above, the man who was waiting for his wife outside the restaurant, is college-educated. He and his wife have an annual income of more than $100,000 a year. Still, a woman thought he was a valet.

After a while, these indignities begin to pile up and can really do damage to one's psyche.
Middle-class individuals often have the resources and support to withstand such incidents, regardless of the frequency. They can take vacations, travel and get away from it all. They often can find solace in the fact that despite the indignities, they have what they need to be comfortable in their lives.

That's often not the case among those who are poorer. The releases are not always available to everyone.
   "Why do poor black people always look so mad?" a reader once wrote.
   The answer is that they probably are mad. It's difficult being poor in America. While that's been true almost any time in our nation's history, it's probably truer today than ever. Conspicuous consumption is omnipresent and expanding media choices display even more of the opulence that America is ready to share if you have the money.
   The poor often find themselves like starving street urchins looking into a restaurant window at plump diners nibbling at overfilled plates. Add to that combination the excess baggage that comes with being black in this country and it becomes clearer why some folks seem to go through life with scowls on their faces.

I don't ask for sympathy. Indeed, most people who have been dealt these indignities aren't in search of sympathy.
What most of them would like, I suspect, is an increased sensitivity on the part of whites who make judgments so quickly, often based solely on the color of a person's skin.

There is nothing that I or any other African-American can do about this problem. It's one that only white Americans can deal with.
For no matter what I do, what I say, what I think or what I wear, there will be those white individuals - too many, I'm sorry to say - who will immediately judge me based on my color alone.
I am more than a color. I wish people would realize that.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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