One hundred years ago, give or take, I was a lowly hospital supply clerk working my way through graduate school at the University of Iowa. My job was to pull carts full of medical supplies to all the nursing units in the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, which at that time was the largest teaching hospital in the world (it’s gotten much bigger since but it may not still be the largest). Anyway, one of my partners in this endeavor was a young man from Nigeria who was pursuing his Ph.D. in economics by the name of {we’ll say} Emmanuel.
Emmanuel was brilliant, funny, empathetic, a hard worker and, other than a blind spot when it came to the relative value of Volvos, was an excellent critical thinker. We had many interesting and sometimes contentious conversations about every kind of thing from politics to art and music to films to current events. I was often humbled by his vastly superior undergraduate education, his command of the English language, his quick wit and his broad experience from around the world (Iowa City was a giant step up, culture-wise, from where I grew up but it was no competition for someone with his life experience).
Anyway. One day while we were delivering supplies to nursing units I happened to ask him what he thought about the United States in general. This was an atypical question for our discussions which generally concentrated on much more focused topics. But I’ll never forget his answer as long as I live:
“I like America very much except for one thing. In America I’m a black man. In Nigeria I’m only a man.”
Everyone who thinks that the Black Lives Matter movement is much ado about nothing needs to think about what Emmanuel said that day. Of course we, as white people, don’t understand the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s precisely because we aren’t “white people,” we’re just “people.” This is a privilege that we take for granted but one that should be extended to every American regardless of where they come from or what they look like. We have a long way to go. Still.
