Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Empathy

Let me tell you a story about privilege and profiling that might help with your understanding of what’s going down in Baltimore, and so many other places.
I used to work downtown.  I was the acting Director of Vehicle Maintenance for the City of Seattle, and my office was on the 52nd floor of the Seattle Municipal Tower, known in those days as Key Tower from the previous owner, Herman Sarkowsky, who sold it to the city but kept the penthouse for himself.  From my sealed window I could look out to the south over the International District and Sodo, and when the wind blew the building rocked and rolled.
My daughter had a back office job for the Bank of America at that time, working on the 10th floor of an office tower just two blocks north of me on 5th Avenue.  We had a regular habit of meeting for lunch every Wednesday in front of her building, which was controlled access with a large customer service counter just inside the main entrance with security people on duty.  You had to pass by them to get to the elevators, and you needed a badge to use them.  Typical of many downtown office buildings, the ground floor extends off to one side to meet up with an underground tunnel across the street, with a deli on the main floor and a small waiting area with seats under the direct gaze of the counter.
Outside, the front plaza is connected to an outdoor mezzanine on the south side, which includes a covered area for employees to take their lunch breaks and a smoking section - before such criminality was outlawed in Seattle - by an escalator moving in both directions along a stairway favored by the younger athletic types.  I quickly found it amusing to wait for her by riding the escalator up and down for a few minutes, and she learned to look for me there first when her elevator disgorged a flock of her and her co-workers.
Those of you who know me would not be too surprised to imagine me in business casual attire, which was expected of a bureaucrat of my level with 15 supervisors and 125 employees, and typically would include Dockers or similar slacks, nice shoes and a button collar shirt with a nice jacket or sport coat and a tie (!), unlike my usual attire of jeans and biker t-shirts if not riding gear or slacker shorts and Tevas.  I still have those work clothes.  I pull them out every now and then and spit on them.  But I admit they were enough to detract from the big guy look with the full beard so that I was never bothered by the security types after I stopped in the first time and told them who I was waiting for.
So one day, when the wind blew and the rain came down sideways, I was out there like usual, riding the escalator up and down, killing time.  The difference was, on this day I was wearing an Aussie Duster coat in deference to the weather, one of those full length coats in leather or heavy waxed outdoor fabric and a built-in cape that, along with the waist belt, shoulder epaulets and trim look like something out of the wild west (which indeed it is) and, on me, with a black leather hat on top, could possibly be considered, ahem, intimidating.
So there I am, about to turn at the top and head back down the escalator, when suddenly appeared a young, earnest Security Guard in full uniform complete with radio and mace on his belt, asking if he can be of any assistance.
I smiled at him and said, “I come here every Wednesday to meet my daughter for lunch, who works on the 10th floor.  I've been doing this regularly for the last six months or so, but only now do you want to know if you can help me?  Tell me, what is it that made you decide to talk to me now?  Was it the coat?”  He stammered and blushed and assured me that it was just a random coincidence, nothing to be concerned about, and beat a hasty retreat.  I had just been profiled.  Some security person had noticed me riding the escalator, and, strictly because of my appearance, assigned me potential threat status and pushed an alarm button.  The weather improved, and the next week I was back out there in my normal getup, and nothing was said or done.
So what does this have to do with Baltimore, or Ferguson, or Brooklyn?  Nothing, and everything.  My experience on the escalators of the Bank of America Building on 5th and Marion in downtown Seattle is a simple experiment that any of you can perform any time you want.  Just show up there looking like some kind of a lowlife, or a bum, or a pickpocket, or, heaven help us, a biker, and see how quick you draw a response.  That’s the security people’s job, to identify threats and respond.  Take two kids and ride the escalator all day, and you’ll not get challenged.
Now, imagine how it would feel if changing your clothes made no difference.  What if, no matter what you did, or wore, the minute you started riding up and down that escalator the security guard was going to be right there, wanting to know what you’re up to?  What if it was the color of your skin that set off alarm bells in the security guard brains?  And that simple question, my friends, is the essence of white privilege.  Us white folks know, in the back of our minds at all times, that any cop or security guard that looks at us will assume the best, unless we’re dressed like a beggar or a biker and look the part.  Even then, the last thing we would expect an officer to do, and the most shocking thing they could do, would be to pull a weapon on us.  What if that was the most likely thing to expect in any encounter?  What if it happened over and over again, every single time?  How would you feel about that?  What if, every time you turned around, somebody just like you got killed by the police?  Can you imagine living in a society where that would ever happen?  Like the old guy who was walking down the road on a charity errand the other day, swinging a golf club.  He got arrested for being a black man with an obvious weapon.  How many of us white folks would stop for one second to think, “Gee, maybe I better not take my golf club with me, some cop might decide it’s a weapon”, before heading out for a walk in the park?

Now, imagine you’re a young black man, and you've grown up in the inner city where life is hard all the time and nobody wants to hire you, and your history and the history of all your people is a history of slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, and discrimination, and you know, deep down inside, just like the white folks know that the cops will assume they are the good guys, you will be assumed to be the bad guy.  Imagine living under that, if you can, and it might start to make sense that every now and then people who live like that tend to explode.  It’s called, “don’t give a fuck”, and people adopt it when their backs are on the wall.  It’s not your fault, directly, but you still have to pay the bill.  So what can any of us do?  Got any ideas? :-{)}

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