My Mother Channeling Bert Williams

Walking through some store in Mexico a few years ago, very small and tight a space, a sales girl decided I, as darkest person in the store, looked suspicious. Not the granny with the giant handbag huddled in the corner, or the two teenagers with backpacks, Nope, just me. 

They apparently do not have shows like Punk'd or Candid Camera in Mexico,* then she would have known what was up, because as she followed me, when I knew she was, I began to walk faster. Leading her around in circles that would sometimes loop back on her and cut around. Coming to abrupt halts so she would run into me, eventually dropping things or knocking them off the shelf to slow her down. Ah, what fun.

Did I mention this was in a store about 16x16 feet? Yes, about the size of a small/medium living room. Did she ever catch on? I don't know. What I do know is that my friends never laughed so hard in public and I had a lot of fun channelling Ada Issacs Menken (see brilliant Daphne Brooks book Bodies in Dissent for info about Menken). 

Do not get me wrong. This being followed is tiresome, to say the least. It is, as Fred Moten so wonderfully noted when I saw him speak recently, and I paraphrase, "One of those things you are forced to deal with by being Black. Being Black is a series of uncomfortable incidents that remind you of context and your very Skin." He's so sharp.

I do not remember the first time I was followed or knew someone who suffered what I call the  "Black Trailing Behavior" I have heretofore described, but the times it got "rough" are as clear as day!

> My three Aunts - Teachers, Business Owners, Executives - were followed, grabbed, and searched in the back of a NY&Co store in upstate NY. Caught up in the shock and incredulity a Black person instantly feels at how a situation goes from pleasant to evil and invasive in the blink of an eye, they did not resist as one would fully expect them to, if you knew my family! These regal Black women in their late 30's and early 40's allowed their bags and things to be searched by White store associates in their 20's making $6.50/hr, in a dirty back storeroom that reeked of old coffee grounds and that particular stale-ish smell rooms get when they are infrequently visited or cleaned. After, of course, finding Nothing amid the expensive leather purses and shopping bags, they simply let them go! Still in a daze, my wonderful Aunts wandered out the doors and home. Only to break later under the knowledge that bearing/clothing/deportment aside - they were always just Black.

>My three friends and I. First year of college, so excited to be brilliant women on the rise.  We took off one Friday from the library in search of new togs for the season. In some random shop in the mall (perhaps another NY&Co - I have never had a good experience in that store!), in our happiness, when a young 20-ish White girl comes up to us and asks "Where are the earrings that were here?!?" pointing at some random open spot beyond arm's reach of any of us on a rack of hundreds of cheap, already peeling earrings.  Again, shocked into near incoherency, we Literally Do No Understand her question - "What?" She asks again. We say who knows! Off she storms. It takes us long minutes talking to each other to realize that, despite the number of White customers nearer to the rack than we and despite our relatively pulled together appearance, We must be the ones that took some phantom pair of earrings because at the moment we were the only Black ones in the store! Seriously Angry we asked for the manager only to find out (shock of shocks!) that She Was the Manager! I have always hated that lie. We dropped whatever we were going to buy on the floor and left. Again reminded that, regardless of where we were in school, we Are Black.

>And the final one for this post - in Kmart of all places! My Mother and a much younger version of myself. Of all people to be followed, My Mother! Very down to earth and accessible. But also So Bougie! To get off topic for a moment of humor: when I wanted to go camping like the other little Brownie-Troop girls (all White) in my suburban NY neighborhood, My Mother said "No dear. Only homeless people sleep outside." Hysterical! But that's what you think when you grow up in the Bronx as she did! But I digress.

Anyway. She, as always, dressed to perfection with an expensive handbag (teaching me subconsciously the bad habit of irresistible adoration for fine leather purses that I carry with me to this day on my arm & on my credit card) and a pulled together outfit. I am certain I was dressed the same - it wasn't until I could dress myself that pictures took a slide towards the awful. 

I don't know when she knew we were being followed, but like a gazelle on a game trail, she knew a hyena was drooling close by and threatening her baby! So with Gazelle-like Grace, she had been leading this glorified-dog on a tour of the store, up and down aisles, through the same section four times in a row. In her red apron, the sales girl must have been so upset to have been given this task! Now I realize too that is why My Mother looked so happy and smug - her deft turns and humor laced slips, like Bert Williams in vaudeville glam! Dropping a roll of paper towels there, knocking a T-shirt down here - juggling Me, Blackness, and Vanity/Pride like a Pro! 

Now I know why we never got the toilet paper or toothpaste or whatever we had gone in for! We had been marked for trailing and at some point she had realized we Are Black.

Now Please Don't Get Me Wrong!!! I am no elitist, my bougie tendencies do not extend to judgements based on attire or appearance! I really do believe in the parable that says you should give help to anyone because it might be Jesus coming to the door dressed poorly seeking food. And I believe that you never know where you will find the face of God, and thus grace for yourself. So what you are wearing should NEVER determine treatment! I know it does, but dressing a certain way should not exclude you from or entitle you to harassment!! Just as a certain skin color should not do anything similar either! 

Then why do I tell these stories, dwelling lovingly on leather handbags? (Aside from my aforementioned Addiction - really its a sickness.) I do so for the people who continue to tell me its all in our heads. That Black people make these things up by always looking for Race. 

Looking for Race, Looking for Race, Looking for Race!! If I had a quarter for every time someone told me Blacks were just "looking for race," like Race was a freakin' shoe under the bed we needed to wear to an appointment, or a dime we dropped under the machine while buying some skittles, I would be able to retire to an island next to Oprah's in the Caribbean!!

These folks seem to think that we enjoy feeling harassed. That we get some thrill out of it! Now, I believe this belief of theirs in "Joy in Social Subjugation" is tied psychologically to a need among an oppressive group to feel what they are doing to the oppressed - a type of Projection for you Freudians out there - but that is for another post.... Or a book.... ©!

For those who think we Want harassment and seek it in every altercation I say Bahhhh! I point to the countless stories of broken hearts, tears, depression, angry letters to company headquarters, and swears to never shop in such-n-such a place again! I point to Black women in particular, across a spectrum of earning potential and class status - from my Daycare Center owning Aunt to Oprah - who want very, very much to believe in the dream of us all blending together, and expanding outward to live fully realized, non-raced lives. 

And yet, in Moten's terms, must continually be confronted by the discomfort of being pushed back into ourselves forcefully. Of realizing that skin trumps so very much. Skin trumps everything. 

Thank God for the humor! If not for My Mother's comic turn in my childhood, anger over the injustice might have overtaken me by now. If not for laughter, where would we be?

So Thank You Mom - Happy Mother's Day!!!

So post your comments, share your stories, lord knows there are millions. This is a space to let it out so it can stop coming back and killing us as high blood pressure and heart disease!

(*random generalization used for comic flow and not meant to be taken literally or as a slur against Mexico. And yes I am footnoting a Blog post for the second time. its that serious over here in Academijikistan.)