The Uniform of My Color
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February 2006
?Suerte. Suerte,? the two young women whispered as I walked by.
Breathless in the thin air found at 15,000 feet, I was dressed in the uniform of the American budget traveler ? faded jeans, sunglasses, and worn hiking boots. They wore bowler hats worn to the side (indicating they were single), colorful pleated skirts, and had brown, thinly-lined faces. I wondered what they were hoping for (A husband?) and how much influence they believed my presence would have. In Potos?, as in other parts of Bolivia, black people are said to bring good luck when walking by.
In mainland China, it was a freak show. I traveled there with two other Americans (one white and one latino) in the summer of 1987 after graduating from Stanford University. At the time, the Chinese government was allowing more private enterprise in and independent travel to China. However, in spite of the influx of foreigners to China, I met many people who had never seen a black person in the flesh before.
In China and Bolivia and other places I?ve traveled and lived, my skin has served as an involuntary and immutable uniform, a way for people to identify and try to understand me. People?s reactions to this uniform have varied, and have affected me in ways I have not always understood.
I had my strangest Chinese adventure in Guilin, in southern China. I had just biked five hours from the gorgeous small town of Yangshuo, and was tired and thirsty from 90-degree heat and high humidity.
After finding a hotel, I found my companions in a restaurant on a main street. The clientele was a mix of Chinese and Westerners, faces shining from the heat and humidity. As in many state-owned restaurants, the staff were standing in the back chatting while their clients went hungry and thirsty.
Right after I entered, greeted my compatriots, and sat down eager to eat and drink, one of the female staff began to jabber, her eyes doubling in size as she looked at me. She called to someone in the back, who reached back for something before coming.
Woman number one approached me quickly, licked her fingers, and began to rub my left leg (I was wearing shorts) to see if the color would come off. Meanwhile, Woman number two went behind me and began raking my hair backwards with a fine comb. She pulled the comb so hard that she snapped my head back, giving me a pain in the neck in addition to being one. The others in the restaurant found the episode amusing, which annoyed me further. That episode was the first chapter of a book filled with frustration and humiliation, written during my two months in China.
Satellite TV made blacks like Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan well-known in China. A man in Shanghai wanted to spar with me because the only black people he saw on TV were boxers. On a train from Beijing to Shanghai, an entire passenger car crowded around me as if the person talking to me were Oprah conducting an interview with a famous guest.
I found the extra attention tiresome. In China, it seemed I was the lone attraction in a traveling zoo, free to go anywhere, but always inside a cage, separated from the outside world by invisible bars of ignorance. Because I didn?t want to come across as being unfriendly or rude, I tried to mask my frustrations, which took a lot of emotional energy. I was so frustrated that I didn?t take any pictures during the whole trip. The only photos I have are duplicates from my friend Larry.
At home, reactions to my skin color have been less exhausting but more frustrating. In my first engineering job out of college, some people?s expectations of my intellect were very low. People complimented me on being able to use a PC or speak some Spanish : ?wow, you?re smart.? At first, I was flattered by this praise. Eventually, I realized I was both the beneficiary and victim of lowered expectations. Although I?d graduated from one of the nation?s top universities, to some people I was just a twenty-something black male, unlikely to be capable of much intellectually.
I spent the critical time of my youth in Miami, Florida, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These were times of racial upheaval and tension, including the Miami riots and an influx of Latin America and Caribbean immigrants. In my teenage years, the response to me was fear, not amazement. I found I had the power to move mountains, especially in places with few black residents.
North Miami Beach was only six miles from my neighborhood of Scott Lake, but was a world away. Scott Lake was predominantly black, with few areas to shop. North Miami Beach, primarily white, was home to the air-conditioned 163rd Street Mall, a mecca for bored teenagers and a sanctuary from the oppressive South Florida climate. The mall and the surrounding area were the places in which I was the most disruptive.
I normally dressed plainly--t-shirt, no-name jeans, and no-name sneakers--like many of the white kids in North Miami Beach. Regardless of how I dressed, elderly shoppers who normally would let nothing get between them and the latest sale would wait until I was inside the store if I were entering at the same time they were. Walking down the sidewalk, I parted seas of chattering young women, who swept to the side as if blown by a hurricane as I approached. Of course, I knew that old ladies and young women felt especially vulnerable to violent crime. I also knew that we young black men accounted for more than our share of violent criminals. That, however, was no consolation as people avoided me as if I were wearing prison stripes. Facts are facts; however, no mound of statistical data could dam the frustration that flowed within me in those times.
Sometimes my color attracted people instead of repelling them. Because I loved to read, often as I ambled through North Miami Beach I went into bookstores in the area. As the clerk approached in response to the doorbell, I could see the anticipation melt from their face once they saw mine. ?May I help you,? they would ask, in a tone that indicated they didn?t want to be helpful.
As I walked around, the clerk would trail behind me as if drawn by some irresistible gravitational force. They seemed shocked if I asked an informed question about books: do you have any other books by Richard Wright? Do you have any of Agatha Christie?s shorter mysteries? I noticed that kids of other hues lacked the pull I had. I often left those stores resentful, shaking my head and thinking that it was feast or famine in North Miami Beach--either people fled from me as if I had a fatal communicable disease or they trailed me like groupies behind a pop star.
No one can claim to be free of prejudice, and my classmates and I were often guilty of stereotyping others, even those who were also of African descent. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Haitians fleeing the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere were inundating Miami?s beaches. Many arrived in makeshift boats, with few possessions. Their arrival, seen often on the news, made the Haitians already in Miami stand out more.
The Haitian students at Parkway Junior High seemed a breed apart. Meek and unconcerned with fashion, they seemed to never get into fights. We began to explicitly identify them as different and therefore inferior. The word ?Haitian? became another arrow in the quiver of insults we shot at each other. One of the best ways to ruin someone?s reputation was to spread the rumor that they were Haitian. Because of reports in the press of some refugees carrying tuberculosis or HIV, Haitians developed an undeserved reputation of being disease carriers, diminishing them further in our eyes. This was ironic because how young black men were portrayed in the media affected how people treated us. Being a Haitian carried such a stigma that some Haitians denied their ancestry. A teacher at Parkway overheard one student accuse another of being a Haitian, and interrupted saying, ?What?s wrong with being a Haitian? I?m a Haitian.? The students looked at him as if he?d admitted to being a Martian.
When I found out that Bolivians considered Black people to be good luck, I was relieved to experience a positive reaction to my skin color for once. It was weird to hear the word ?luck? whispered as I walked by, but it was a welcome change from seeing people scatter in my wake. Having my presence considered a blessing instead of a curse was a new experience for me, but the novelty wore off eventually.
Sometimes I became so offended at being stereotyped that I stereotyped others. My experiences in North Miami Beach and China convinced me that many (but not all) people in those areas were ignorant and prejudiced. Sometimes I could not walk into a store or down a street without expecting my skin color to be an issue. Shoplifters and boxers are not normally considered friendly people, and the sullen look on my face probably helped confirm the stereotypes I was reacting to.
One day, in Palo Alto, California, a city with few black residents, I realized just how suspicious I had become about how people thought of me. I was in a bookstore, browsing, when I saw a clerk approaching me out of the corner of my eye. I already felt like an island of brown in a sea of white and yellow. The clerk asked me, ?can I help you?? ?No,? I growled, feeling that she approached me as an excuse to make sure I didn?t steal anything. ?Sorry,? the clerk replied, her normally pale face crimson with embarrassment and shame.
This reaction, resulting from years of being feared and underestimated, shocked me. My rainstorm of anger left the clerk and me soaked. As I walked away, wet in my own rage, I realized I had to think differently. I knew that not every clerk who approached me thought I might try to steal something. In presuming the worst and reacting as I did, I was exhibiting my own brand of ignorance. I could not justify my attitude any more than the Chinese man who thought I was a boxer because I was black or my co-workers who were surprised I had half a brain could justify theirs. Their ignorance caused an offense, as did mine. I used to justify scowling at people when I thought that they were exhibiting bias against me by saying I was the victim. In reacting so violently I was the violator. I thought I was standing on moral high ground but I was knee-deep in muck.
I realized that maintaining my sanity meant walking a narrow path between two deep and dangerous swamps. On one side lay na?vet?, in which I would assume my skin color never affected how people treated me. Trudging through the slough of na?vet? would, of course, drive me insane. It would be a living hell of self-criticism as I forced myself to deny reality and blamed my overactive imagination for getting me frustrated for nothing.
The other extreme would be a nasty cynicism, which would also drive me insane. As I tramped around, suspicion would buzz around people I dealt with like a swarm of mosquitoes, even around those acting with innocent intentions.
The solution, I came to realize, was to simply be sure of who I was, and not make presumptions one way or the other about people?s ideas about me. I am not a shoplifter, good luck charm, or boxer. I am simply a man who happens to have black skin ? it?s that simple. No one?s prejudices, fears, or ignorance can change that.
