Tag: #reparations

Falsely Accused

Falsely Accused

Fresh off a Zoom webinar titled Midwest Reparations, I rushed to my local coffee shop for a takeaway to sip during my upcoming current events group.

“12-ounce coffee in a 16-ounce cup?” The White barista asked. That’s my usual, with room for cream.

“Yes, please. What are all these new pastries? Chocolate cake? Key lime pie?”

“Yep, they’re new. All from different bakeries” said the barista.

“I’ll be back later with friends. They. Will. Love. These.” I said.

The Blackroots Alliance webinar that morning enlightened me on reparations projects in the Midwest. These are nascent activities reviving the 159-year-old “40 Acres and a Mule” policy for emancipated slaves that was promised and then revoked during Reconstruction. The initial focus of current reparations projects is research to uncover the descendants of enslaved people and how they’ve been impacted. Non-Black allies join at the end of the process when it’s time to distribute funds. Research is conducted by the harmed community, Black Americans, particularly African descendants, who look through the eyes of the tortured generations of chattel slavery. Non-Black Americans cannot be trusted to do this research since they see through a different lens: the eyes of the colonizers, the enslavers, the guardians of the dominant culture.

With this new information,  I was wondering how I, an old White woman, could fit into the reparations movement as I filled my coffee with half and half and rushed over to my current events group.

The group discussed the news of familiar territory: TFG, the former guy, and his latest legal shenanigans, immigration, climate change, gun control, and the ever-evolving White Christian Nationalism. Afterward, a small group sauntered over to the coffee shop where I’d spotted the new pastries. Six of us pulled up around a small table, coats draped over our chairs, rising one by one to fetch our drinks. 

I was the last one to the counter.

“I’m sorry, we can’t serve you.” said the barista.

“What?”

“We can’t serve you. The manager wants to talk to you.”  I joined my friends and announced what happened. The manager appeared and asked to speak to me privately.

“We can’t serve you because there’s been a report of you using a racial slur this morning.”

“What? What racial slur?

“The “N” word.”

“Well, there’s a mistake. I’ve never used that word in my life.’

“You understand we have to investigate when something like this is reported?”

“Wait. Are you accusing me of this?

“We have to investigate. Meanwhile, we cannot serve you.”

“For how long?”

“For the unforeseeable future.”

“You’re kidding. Look at me. I really don’t have an unforeseeable future.”

My friends were incredulous. ‘You? Boy, have they got the wrong person.’ They were ready to mount a protest in front of the building, signs and all.

In the following days, I connected with the company’s Chief Operating Officer. She apologized and emailed me a store voucher for $150. That’s a lot of coffee.

The coffee reparations, however, failed to dispel the lingering notion that I’m not a credible witness to my own story, that I’m not sufficiently worthy to be believed. How can we expect descendants of enslaved Africans to automatically manifest self-worth after enduring generations of false accusations, lynchings, and pressed-down powerlessness? 

We owe them a lot.

Soul Clawing Days

Anne Lamott, a popular soul-searching memoirist, live-Zoomed a teaching on writing recently. She emphasized two major points: 1) stop not writing, and; 2) no one cares if you’re writing, especially your family and friends. Anne told us to be likable narrators, never vengeful and don’t antagonize the reader.

I risk being an “un”likable antagonistic narrator in writing about the looting and violence in my downtown Chicago neighborhood, the Gold Coast. An amalgam of landscaped mansions, row houses and mixed income highrises, the Gold Coast rose in the wake of the 1871 Great Chicago Fire. Wealthy industrialists built North Lake Shore Drive to front their new mansions. In the late 1980s, the Gold Coast was the second most affluent neighborhood in the United States, behind Manhattan’s Upper East Side.  I’m neither affluent nor near-affluent. I live in the Gold Coast to be safe.

In the early morning of May 31, I walked out the back door of my building to Oak Street with Henry the dog. Oak Street is a block-long high-fashion retail museum where the haute couture show off their latest trendsetting wardrobes in oversize clear glass windows. The Chicago uprising stemming from the George Floyd murder turned Oak Street into a comic book version of a visit from Godzilla. Within hours shattered glass lay strewn on the streets and sidewalks, dismembered mannequins lay naked on the curbs, paper and cardboard boxes lay shredded everywhere. A U-Haul truck perched on the curbside by the shattered window of Dolce & Gabbana. Scavengers foraged through smashed-in Armani’s looking for remnants of the organized looting that had just ended. The street recovered somewhat over the next few months and then bam! On August 10 Godzilla came through again and not only sacked Oak Street, but unloosed a reign of violence and looting all over Chicago’s retail corridors. 

Black Lives Matter, a radical national organization became a mainstream darling after the gruesome George Floyd murder. Yes, white people said, we finally get it! We value Black people and their right to self-determination. We want to fight for equitable systems too. We might even support reparations. We’ll try to understand what you mean by “defund the police.” We pledge to learn more about white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. Ending criminalization of Black communities is our goal too. We’re with you.

A BLM spokesperson stood in front of the police station that held 100 arrestees from the August 10 uprising and announced that BLM considers looting “reparations”, and that downtown attacks will continue until there’s justice and equality in their neighborhoods.

Activist Michael Pfleger appeared hangdog on TV mouthing a familiar plea including words like, “decades of disinvestment and abandonment,” and begging city leaders for a strategy. 

“I’ve never seen things worse.” He said.

In 1968 I had an autographed copy of Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice”. I have no idea what drew me to anti-racism then or what draws me to it now. But I sure do feel as defeated as Father Pfleger sounds.

And I miss walking Henry through the Oak Street fashion museum.