Of White Discomfort

Baby boy, husband and I were boarding the train to head downtown to do something. I cannot recall what now, but I'm sure it was something fun; we rarely do un-fun things as a family these days.
Baby boy was in the stroller as he is a no-good walker still, so we took the elevator down to the platform.
We're chatting, the two of us, about something mindless and baby boy is joining in the chatter.

The elevator door opens and a black man and woman exit the elevator continuing in their conversation. As she passes me, she says, without looking me in the face and with the sincerest of tones, "ma'am, I am sorry for being so loud."

I immediately respond, "Oh no, don't worry, you're fine," in my sincerest of tones.
We load on the elevator and head up to the platform. Once we're on, though, I turned to husband and say, "Oh my goodness, that sucks. She thinks she made me uncomfortable. So she apologized. Because I'm white and because black persons always have to always make white people feel ok."

I start thinking of what I should've said, other than "you're fine."

A couple days later baby boy and I are downtown playing in the splash fountain. He's sopping wet but I don't want that in my car, so we head to Starbucks for an inevitable beverage and the usage of their lovely changing table.

As I round the corner to the back of the store where there are two bathrooms, I encounter a large black man and I say, "They're both full?" He responds affirmatively and says something nice to my son who smiles and waves at him - we're making conversation.

One bathroom opens up, and, as he is first in line I expect him to use it. He instead holds the door and insists that I go first. I say, "Thank you, but we can wait." There's another one that will open soon.

 He insists kindly, still holding the door for us.

I accept and enter the bathroom. He lets the door close and says to me in a sincere and friendly tone, "Now don't forget to lock the door."

He's giving me permission to lock the door.

He's recognizing that as a white woman, archetypically I am uncomfortable around him, and he's recognizing my discomfort and attempting to ameliorate that discomfort.

He was gone when I left the bathroom with my changed and dry baby boy.

What could I have said, anyway, had he been there? Thank you, of course, but what else?

It's not my job nor my right to tell African Americans that they don't need to make me comfortable. I don't need to teach black folk a lesson on how to interact with white folks. Because they know how to interact with white folks for the sake of the safety of their bodies.

If I said anything to this man or to the woman on the elevator about how they didn't need to make me feel comfortable, that would be selfish - that would be me trying to make me feel better about the fact that I am a part of this white expectation of comfort. Or at least a white expectation that you as a person of color will not cause me discomfort.

Black folk who make white folk uncomfortable suffer consequences in this country. Their rights and their safety and their bodies are taken from them so quickly when they make a white person uncomfortable.

And yet, in the last year since Ferguson, as the #BlackLivesMatter movement has been popping up on white screens and in white news sources, white people have started to feel uncomfortable.

We've started to squirm a little bit and wince a little bit. Because for the first time in many of our lives we have had to consider race. We have had to think about what it means to be white in relation to what it means to be a person of color.

And for many of us, we've never HAD to think of this before. We've never been required to think of what life as a white person even means. Because as a white person, we're the normal, and all y'all are deviations.

AND THIS IS UNJUST.

We must feel discomfort. We must ask ourselves the tough difficult awkward questions. We must be willing to feel white and feel wrong, for it is only when we begin to question our own whiteness and what that whiteness means,
what that whiteness has gotten us,
what that whiteness can get us, can we begin to dismantle greater systemic racism.

It is only when I can recognize as a white person that I got that job, I got that relationship, I got that raise, I'm in this house, I got that loan, I got that car, I got that degree in large part because I am white; only when I recognize this discomforting fact can I begin to recognize the system of disadvantage, the system of racism, faced by persons of color on every front, in every part of their lives.

Persons of color are facing systemic discomfort all the time and yet they're expected to keep us comfortable? That's some bullshit.

As white folk, we need to get uncomfortable.