Monday's Opening Thought: June 6, 2022

This week’s opening thought: There is an Amazon package on my front porch. It’s not my package; it was delivered to the wrong address. The porch that this package should’ve been delivered to is probably five or six doors down from my house.

I am not dropping that package off by myself.

I have never had a conversation with this neighbor, but I know they are white. They likely don’t know who I am, as I tend to keep to myself. I am in no mood to try to drop something off at some white person’s house, only for them to accuse me of trying to take their package from their porch.

I don’t need that trouble.

Is dropping this package off at the correct address the right thing to do? Of course. But I’m a big Black man in an overwhelmingly white city where many of my neighbors look at me like I haven’t lived in my home for nine years.

I don’t need that trouble.

Yesterday, I was walking into my local supermarket. A white woman was walking in ahead of me. Because I have been on the receiving end of white women acting like a Black person being close to them is a “safety issue,” I maintained a few paces between us. When I entered the store, I saw this white woman struggling to pull a cart out of the cart storage area. I could see that the cart behind it had been shoved in at an angle, making dislodging the carts a problematic endeavor. I stepped forward, smiling with my eyes to maintain friendliness (I was wearing a mask), and pulled the carts apart for her. She thanked me for my help and then proceeded to hand me a gallon of milk that someone had left in the cart. She looked at me and said, “Someone left this behind. You can put this back.”

She thought I worked at the supermarket.

At the time, I was wearing a Fist of the North Star t-shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers, yet she legitimately thought I worked at the supermarket.

Containing my frustration regarding this microaggression, I sternly replied, “I don’t work here.” Her response? She stammered before saying, “Oh, I thought you worked here. You were so nice.”

The layers of anti-Blackness, y’all. The layers.

At that moment, I wanted to drag her ass for saying to me that she thinks Black people are mean unless we’re being nice to her, then we’re “the help.” But I knew that it would be her word against mine and I would ultimately be facing white rage if I did that.

I don’t need that trouble.

Being a “good person” means nothing when anti-Blackness ensures that you’re typecast as a dangerous criminal or only considered “good” when you’re subservient to whiteness. I get up every day, aiming to be a decent person. It’s who I am, a person who wants to help others. But I do so while factoring in that I am a big Black man in an overwhelmingly white city where people see my skin tone before anything else. And sometimes?

Sometimes I don’t need that trouble.

I know I’m not the only one.