I was coming back from lunch when it happened. There was something that often occurred in the big open lobby that always bothered me. A white police officer would escort a line of Black prisoners in shackles into the county government building (which building was named for a Black man, so I guess that was supposed to make it alright). There should have been officers of color also doing this job, but I never saw them; and there must have been white prisoners now and then, but mostly this public performance in this bastion of the South marched straight out of the pages of a macabre not-dead history. The crowd would part as everyone made way for this procession. The scene was always unnerving. If I tried to meet the eyes of a prisoner passing by, to commiserate, as if to say this feels wrong, it still felt wrong, because what if you don’t want to be watched? Especially when, regardless of your sin or innocence, you have no choice in any of this? But to avert my eyes meant ignoring reality, even though reality appeared to be an institutionalized public shaming. Generally, I would avert my eyes, wondering if it were possible to not be a part of this spectacle.
I had limited time coming back from lunch and certainly not the time or tolerance that this procession (of white power) demanded, so, seeing the line of prisoners approaching, I quickly skipped to the other side several paces ahead of it, stopped by the cafeteria where I grabbed what was optimistically called coffee, and was just arriving in the stairwell to hightail it back to my grim gray cubicle, when the white officer stopped me.
Apparently he thought it was perfectly acceptable to stop young women in stairwells and accost them for not properly bowing to his authoritay. I stared at him like he’d lost his damn mind, because he had, this officer who’d followed me and had now managed to get me alone, apparently with the expectation of some sort of apology — from me (?!?) for crossing the lobby ahead of his parade (of handcuffed men). Yes. Seriously. His (white power) parade required my time and respect, even if he had to stalk me into an empty stairwell to demand it. That was why he was angry (because I’m sure he couldn’t possibly have been projecting his petty bureaucrat frustrations onto me). His anger was seething beneath the cool veneer of his uniform, which felt exactly as if we were suddenly following a Stephen King script.
Full disclosure, because in all likelihood it affected the outcome of this encounter: I was a dumb white girl, twenty-six years old, to be precise, but it was clear even to me that if this man I didn’t know from a hole in the wall — who had now cornered me against said wall — expected any kind of subservience, apology, or acknowledgment of whatever power he needed to prove he possessed, I would only disappoint him. It just wasn’t in me. Not even the slightest smidgen of some fake-ass apology. Obviously, I was dumb as a box of rocks (still am). Today we might say that I was operating from a place of privilege, having had no reason to fear police, if that was what he was. I never did find out, never got his name or figured out if he was a guard from the county jail with his shackled entourage. After all, I could already see very clearly who he was: just another petty bureaucrat on a power trip.
I had not been trained in the essential art of placating creepy cops. Maybe because I’d worked at a vast art museum in New York where crazies in my face were a dime a dozen daily, a revolving variety of overblown ego, and I’d reached my threshold for all of that ages ago; maybe because I was unimpressed with this temp job or because I’d been suffering at this same temp job from severe anxiety for six months — anxiety that felt like someone’s hands around my neck, which also leads to a low tolerance for bullshit (in fact, I really shouldn’t have grabbed that coffee. I was so dumb I didn’t even realize that it exacerbates anxiety) — but one thing was obvious. I couldn’t muster the patience for this idiot, whoever he was. Not if my life depended on it. And, fortunately for me, it didn’t.
Had a match scratched him it would’ve ignited with indignation. Had it touched me that flame would’ve been strangled by anxiety. I glared at this grown man like he’d lost his goddamn mind (because if he expected me to apologize, obviously he had) and managed to tell him to get AWAY from me without uttering the word fuck. That’s right. I had manners enough to refrain from telling him that he was fucking crazy if he thought I’d be cow-towing to his demented ego today, tomorrow, or ever. Between my voice and body language I shot him this simple profanity-free message: don’t stalk me or try to intimidate me in an empty stairwell, psycho.
Naturally then, he stuck around. Followed me up the stairs, out of the stairwell, and down the hall to the office where I worked, then my cubicle. He was intent on telling on me to my higher-ups, although what my crime was I still can’t fathom. But that’s how I learned that hurrying across a lobby mere paces ahead of a white power trip parade is an offense worthy of firing. Though to be sure, my resume will tell you that it wasn’t firing because I was only a temp and had therefore never been hired and so couldn’t be fired — which also meant HR would not be protecting me. The uniformed cool veneer had easily convinced the white men in charge of what I’m not sure, hurrying across a lobby being apparently indicative of some grave character flaw. All I was privy to was my conversation with my temp agent, a woman, who commiserated.
This was just a small thing, a small action on my part that apparently proved to a man whose opinion mattered that I didn’t have the requisite respect for authority. For his brand of authority, I hope I never do. Just a small thing that cost me a job I didn’t care about. A small thing that happened a long time ago. One small step for me, one giant leap for authority.
Small things happen every day, and innocent people lose their lives over them. There are too many atrocities to count, from the crime of bird-watching to walking down a street to selling cigarettes to just sitting quietly in your own home. What the police decide to do with their military equipment, where they decide to aim, and whom they decide to kill — mercilessly, monstrously — have devastating consequences. But it takes an entire nation’s shock and unrest, an entire nation’s countless protests to get anything at all akin to consequences for the police.
Something here — in America — is bursting at the seams. On our news we watch an innocent man being murdered. We bear witness to all of this again and again and again and still wonder, when does it end, America?
I’m glad for the rain and glad for the thunder. As if a summer thunderstorm could extinguish all that’s on fire. To be dry inside while the rain pours down in punishing buckets, to be safe from everyday violence, protected more than I know by something as arbitrary as the skin I was born with. To while away my time in the comfortable confines of safety: something I expect as the air I breathe and the sun rising tomorrow, something that is now considered a privilege, not a right. A privilege for some when it should be a right for all. Something as basic as safety. After all, isn’t that the purpose of a police force in the first place?
Watching the rain, even I feel weary. Even I can sense a palpable despair. On Tuesday I wonder if I’ll even talk to my coworkers — my socially-distanced, remotely-working coworkers — about the events of this holiday weekend, the protests across the country, routine violence, police forces that have been armed for decades by our forever well-funded Department of Defense. Privilege means we don’t have to talk about upsetting things. We can avert our eyes, glide along in our little bubbles, and not bother with the fire raging outside.
Politics were banished long ago as a conversation topic, because I don’t know if my coworkers are getting their news from the president or reputable journalists, news organizations that fact-check. And without facts, there is no debate. If you undermine your opponent’s news source, like the Nazis did in prewar Germany, claiming that the free press and its facts were wrong (Lügenpresse, the “lying press”), then there’s no actual debate. No public discourse, no weighing of ideas, no reasoning. Only stagnation.
Privilege means we can ignore politics, the lack of any real public debate, and not suffer too much in the way of consquences. But for how long?
I wonder how many giant leaps authorities made this weekend: in terms of power, in terms of civil liberties or the lack thereof. Even members of the press were attacked by police across the country. Our free press that’s protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Our free press that’s attacked and undermined by this president every day.
So here we sit, some with crushing anxiety in dead-end jobs, but jobs they’re lucky to have, jobs that pay the bills, and some with overwhelming anger seething just below the surface, looking to be unleashed. You’ll find no answers here. Not in this pandemic with its tidal wave of deaths or this police state with its endless violence, not in this America cursed with too dark a history that makes for too dark a present. Remember this day as the rain came. Remember the steam rising from the streets and that the sound of thunder was sweet, a balm for the weary. To be dry inside as the rain poured down in buckets. To watch the rain and not drown.