As I was getting out of my car today in the grocery store parking lot, I was startled by a figure coming alongside of my vehicle, a figure who then turned abruptly and went around my car when (as I assumed) the figure saw that we were about to collide.
However, to my surprise, after I got out of my car and closed the door, I heard a voice say behind me "Oh, I scared you, didn't I? Well don't worry, I'm not a scary black man, but a nice black man."
I turned around to see that the voice who had addressed me belonged to the figure I'd just encountered (I could tell it was he by the jeans and sweater that he wore), but I hadn't even noticed that he was black, until now.
I was about to say something along the lines of "I never thought otherwise" or something like that, until he repeated "I'm a nice black man," then smiled at me and said as he walked away "Nice, like Obama." After which I found myself just standing there like an idiot in the parking lot before I had the wherewithal to go towards the store at last.
What was striking to me about this small interaction was that it suggested to me that this man assumed that I would automatically think he was scary just because he was black--but that, even so, he also assumed that someone like me knows that all blacks are not scary, since Obama is now our President-Elect, and he must have divined (maybe because he saw my Obama bumper sticker when he went around my car?) that I voted for Mr. Obama.
Let me just say that I have the privilege to live in what is considered one of the most integrated cities in our nation. While we definitely have our grievous tales of prejudice, all the same there are so many parts of this town where black and white and Latino and Asian live in the same neighborhoods, including my own neighborhood, and there is little strife among us, or at least in comparison to what I know to exist in other cities across the United States.
So this encounter was rather surprising to me, in a way. I'm still trying to interpret all this. Maybe I'm overanalyzing it too much, as I tend to do in regards to just about everything. Or maybe I'm just an ignorant dumbass. All I can tell is that in this brief exchange it seemed as though the legacy of bigotry, and its possible defeat, lay in the words of this man who bespoke the history of prejudice against blacks and its expectation, but also an understanding that perhaps all was not lost, just because of the man who now represents us as a country, and all the different kinds of folks, including me, who voted for him.
I welcome your thoughts, analyses, critiques, interpretations, of this diary.
Thanks for reading.
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