My Brother Moochie by Issac J. Bailey

Author:Issac J. Bailey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2018-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

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A black Davidson staff member visited an area grocery store. Two young white men standing behind the counter ignored her, she wrote. They had judged her black skin and weren’t willing to treat her fairly because of it, she reasoned, though she swallowed the slight instead of making a scene, a decision black people make every day when forced to contend with incidents they can’t prove are about race but don’t want to ignore. In response, a white male student wrote to The Davidsonian arguing that black staff member was being overly sensitive and couldn’t have known the cause of that poor service. Maybe they were just lazy or having a bad day, he argued. White people sometimes receive poor service, too, but don’t resort to blaming it on racism, he wrote.

A couple of other white students wrote to condemn her as well. They detailed every possible motive for the service—except racism—and essentially told her to shut up and stop searching for racism in every little slight. The grocery store, a few minutes’ walk from the heart of campus, was invaluable to students who didn’t have cars, they wrote. Blanket, unwarranted charges threatened that service, they reasoned.

Those arguments were made by some of the most privileged young people in the world. They had been born into the right families, with the right skin tone, at the right time, in the right place. And yet, they felt compelled to dismiss the concerns of one of the few professional black staff members at Davidson. It was as though I was back on that couch in Belk dorm with Andy.

After a few days of apprehension, I submitted my first column to The Davidsonian, using a voice that had long lain dormant inside me:

…Whites don’t have to look for the derogatory glances that blacks have to look for. Whites don’t have to be concerned about hidden agendas in the actions of people of another race. This is the White-American luxury. White people in this country simply don’t have to worry about those things because they don’t affect them the way they affect African-Americans.

This luxury is not a negative thing; it’s probably extremely positive. Hell, if I had it I could probably put all my energies into other things, like studying and going to class and falling in love.

I’m not saying this because I want sympathy; I’m saying this because I believe that there needs to be a whole lot more sensitivity towards those of a different race.

I am sensitive to the fact that White-Americans have this luxury, and that they are not necessarily racist because they don’t see the things that I do. But at the same time, I want White-Americans to try and see things from my point of view as well…

For the first time at Davidson, my voice reverberated throughout campus, bouncing off classroom walls and in countless conversations among those mostly white fourteen hundred students, faculty, and staff, and members of the surrounding community. It was a rush to be heard, to no longer feel invisible.

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