BRATTLEBORO — This is my third try for a life in southeastern Vermont. The first two attempts to live in Putney and then in Brattleboro were stymied by a lack of job opportunities.
This time (when I did not get the Brattleboro job that I expected - and yes, race may have played a part) I have planned better. I can continue to trek 47 miles, twice a week to quite a nice job in Northampton, Mass. I think that it will pay the bills, while I get connected up here.
Wouldn't you know that I would return, just as events in Ferguson, Mo., blew up. Racial tensions, on high alert.
So I have prepared myself to brace for the usual reactions: lookers, look-away-ers, and I-don't-know-what-to-think-ers.
The looks can be anything, from pitying to arrogant. What they wordlessly say is that I am being noted by a white person who sees my race and jumps immediately in their mind to a connection with Michael Brown.
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I get to imagine the thoughts behind the looks. This is not a prejudiced thing that I do, but a reaction to 57 years of life experiences of what it feels like to walk around as a Black person, when a racially tense issue holds the nation's attention.
It happened during the 1968 riots, when I was attending a predominantly white school outside Washington, D.C.
It happened during the O.J. Simpson trial.
It happened, after Sept. 11, 2001.
Then there are the look-aways. They are most often folks who I imagine feel guilty, embarrassed, or ashamed.
Whatever it is, there is not an opportunity for a dialogue. These good-intentioned folks would have to acknowledge that they are doing the same thing that the lookers do: that is, associate me (a Black woman) with an issue (race riots), purely due to my race.
That is not the easiest way to begin a conversation.
My favorite group is the “I don't know what to do or say, so I will just look pained” group.
I like these people because they are the ones with whom I can usually dialogue. They are having feelings, they are wearing those feelings on their sleeve, and they are usually willing to engage when pushed just a little bit.
Having feelings about all of this is a good thing. Numbing out, and/or intellectualizing this issue, is not.
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One reason I moved to Vermont is the sense of safety and relaxation I feel in this overwhelmingly white context - so different from how I feel in western Massachusetts.
Knowing Vermont's history of eugenics (the subject of Nancy Gallagher's 1999 book Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State), this sense of safety has surprised me.
I attribute it to the number of transplanted New Yorkers in Brattleboro, which is high relative to the number who end up in a town like Greenfield or even Northampton. When I travel to Vermont, my sense of being watched and judged diminishes; I feel like a pleasant ambassador from elsewhere rather than a suspect.
Except at times like these, when racial tensions are high.
So if you happen to fall into that I-don't-know-what-to-do-or-say group, please do not try to talk with me about Black people and our ongoing issues with police brutality and excessive violence. Not as an opening comment in the conversation. Our life experiences have been too different to attempt to begin this connection there.
Our life experiences have been too different to attempt to connect through your white liberalism and good intentions. While Ferguson, Mo., is 1,400 miles away, Mount Pleasant, N.Y. is only 140 miles away from Brattleboro. That is where D.J. Henry was killed by a police officer in 2010. D.J. Henry was cousin to a good friend of mine.
The killing of Black youth in this country is too common, too painful, and too close to home. I am the mother of a son.
Talk with me instead about the United States dissolving into a fascist police state. What does it means to be a citizen in the U.S. in 2014, and what do we expect of our police? All of us - whatever race, ethnicity, gender preference we happen to be - under all circumstances?
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I do not expect any police officer to shoot any citizen (or immigrant, or tourist) dead. Not ever. What is most troubling to me is my country seeming to shrug its collective shoulders and say, “Well, police do have a right to use deadly force...”
I heard Darren Wilson quoted as testifying that his Taser had been too cumbersome to wear that day.
I am anxious for all of our children, not just the Black ones, with that kind of faulty decisionmaking happening, and its deadly consequences.