Recently I took a flight from NJ to NC. Thankfully it was a very short flight. Not sure how I ended up with a middle seat but I did. I prefer aisle seats. As luck would have it, I ended up between a zero personality but harmless guy and a blonde female exuding attitude and seemingly annoyance as soon as she sat down. I will name her, "Becky Sue"...
While I can be overly friendly, I appreciate that some folks just aren't. I recognize the frustration of the Becky Sues in the world in dealing with the harsh reality that life has deemed them as "common" as I and sadly they cannot afford their private, "whites only", airplane which requires that sometimes, fate is not in their favor, and they just might have to sit in close proximity to folks who don't look like them... I appreciate their pain so I give them their space as much as is possible on a cramped airplane and try not to be a nuisance. Not! But I am less bothered and do nothing deliberate to add to their misery. Overall I suck it up too and am damn thankful along with them when it is a short flight.
On the heels of the results of the election revealing that again white women overwhelmingly supported racism, bigotry and white [male] supremacy, coupled with the fact that I am traveling to the south, I may be a little sensitive to or less tolerant of Becky Sue's aura. Although when I travel south, I consciously put myself in check before I go and accept that because of our history, it is sometimes me who pre-judges that I am dealing with racism. I caution myself not to jump to hasty conclusions because there are good folks everywhere...
Becky Sue however, seemed to fit the mold. Maybe it had something to do with the t-shirt I was wearing boldly proclaiming, "We Are the 96%!, Black Women Too Smart to Vote For trump!" Maybe that pissed her off.
Again, given the stats from nationwide elections on Tuesday, I attribute girlfriends distasteful aura to the distinct possibility that she had some pre-judgements going on about me before she even sat down. Who knows? But her "annoyance" attitude screamed that if the plane was not so crowded, surely she would have requested another seat. Po' Thing!!!
She nearly died when the spoon from which I had eaten, dropped in her seat as I reached across her to hand my trash to the flight attendant. I swear, I did NOT drop it on purpose. It really did drop accidentally. But I must say that I did laugh inside at her visible discomfort especially when we never found the spoon. We were sitting too close together in our cramped conditions to adequately be able to look for it. It landed in some crevice. But hell, it was just a spoon. A spoon with remnants of my saliva on it that unfortunately fell somewhere in her space. I felt terrible that she had to fly for another half hour or so being subjected to even the thought. Chuckle. Chuckle... Call it divine intervention. Lucky for both of us, this would be less than a two hour flight.
Feeling pretty certain that skin color was Becky Sue's problem with me, I was ever so happy to be reading an Ebony Magazine that thankfully had a Black person jumping off every page. Beautiful, colorful Black folks to include a feature story on Bryan Stevenson boldly entitled, "From Slavery to Mass Incarceration" talking about the wonderful museum and memorial he has opened in Alabama daring to memorialize and remind America of her of two of her greatest atrocities; slavery and mass lynching which he aptly calls "racial terror lynching". I caught Becky Sue reading over my shoulder when she thought I was glancing out the window. Embarrassed, she quickly turned away when I unexpectedly looked her way.
Reading an Ebony might seem insignificant but to angry, insecure White folks, that Black folks have pride in ourselves and spaces exclusive to us that does not include them, need their approval or that they just don't understand, bothers the heck out of them. Such is the foundation of questions such as why do we need our own TV station, why they protest that Black Lives Matter or why inevitably White women complain that they are left out when Black Girls Rock or P-Diddy pays tribute to us...
Insecurities and some innate, if not incessant need to control non-white folks, especially in white spaces, kicks in high gear and of course, if they are not involved in or consulted about whatever is the occurrence, we must be conspiring to overthrow or do White folks some harm. You know, like when we are at work seen eating or talking together. We can't be just eating or talking together while Black, as do they when they gather to eat or meet in the workplace, we have to be plotting an overthrow, revenge or something of the like adverse to their standing as white folks. Meet mr. trump...
Call it paranoia or although unfounded, call it fear of karma. Newsflash, if Black folks have not retaliated for all the harm done us for centuries in this country, it is safe to assume that it is probably not in the plans... When Black folks gather it is not to the exclusion of others but instead in the interest of us. Gathering or otherwise sharing or celebrating us and our culture, is how we mend, nurture, heal and take care of us in a world that would deny us our right to simply be... Sometimes we just take our time and create our space. It is unapologetic and has everything to do with us. So please rest your mind...
Sitting next to Hilly from the movie, The Help, I mean Becky Sue, for two hours feeling her negative energy on the eve of very disturbing election results from those who would call me "sister", conjured these thoughts for me. Sadly, unlike the character Minny, also from The Help, I did not have a nice slice of pecan pie to offer Ms Hilly... I guess the inadvertent drop of my spoon in her lap was as close as I was gonna' get to delivering southern hospitality for that flight...
#iamnotafeminist
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