Day 23: Get in line

I don't write about racism very often, not because I don't think about it a lot, but because I'm afraid I'm going to say something insensitive  or offensive, certainly without meaning to, and that I'll lose friends or everybody will hate me. Yeah, it's all about me. Tonight I just need to get something off my chest though. And if I do offend any of you, please tell me and I'll do my best to learn from it. I promise that.

Someone posted in a Facebook group I'm in that she was a victim of racism. She said a black cashier opened up a lane and motioned past her, a "lily-white woman," and also past the first person in line to the third woman in line, who was also a black woman. A "sistah," she called her. (I know. I cringed too.) Lily-white was pissed. I guess she's used to being the favorite child.

She got her ass handed to her for suggesting that she was a victim of racism. It was swift and brutal. I'm not going to define racism for you, because I assume if you're still reading here, you understand the fallacy. I have faith you wouldn't be here if you didn't have a basic understanding of how racism works and why Lily-white can't be a victim of racism and furthermore, why neither the cashier nor the woman who was third in line can perpetuate a racist act on her or anyone. Honestly, I thought we'd all agreed on that decades ago, so I'm always surprised when it has to be explained again as if we were in racism kindergarten.

Here's what I want to say about that though. If it were me, I wouldn't give a shit if she brought the third woman, the black woman, to the front of her new line. For all the black women who have sat in the back of the bus, or stood on the bus while white people sat, who have been denied service in restaurants, who have been denied basic amenities like bathrooms, who have gone to schools with no books, who have been told to get to the back of the line throughout the history of this nation, I would welcome her to bring the black woman to the front of the line.

I'm going to get even more personal. For my friend Collette, who was my neighbor and close friend years ago when we lived on Robins Air Force Base in the very middle of Georgia in the early 80's, the most racist place I've ever lived. For Collette, who would go out to eat with her husband at a restaurant and sit there .... and sit there ... and ask to be served and then .... sit there until they gave up and left. Who would hold out her hand for her change at the grocery store only to have it thrown instead on the counter by a cashier who refused to pick it up and put it in her hand, even when Collette insisted. Who was embarrassed by the way her mother treated me, because her mother didn't understand why we would be friends, even though they weren't from the Deep South, they were from Detroit. Who had a master's degree in engineering in spite of everyfuckingthing. Why shouldn't Collette have had a chance at the front of the line back then? That's right. She should have, Lily-white, but it wasn't going to happen in Macon, Georgia. Not then. And apparently not enough has changed even now.

For all of those women, past and present, who are still practically and metaphorically told to go to the back of the line, who can work and work and work and still the front of the line is too far away, please go ahead of me in the line at Walmart. For fuck's sake. Is it not the smallest possible gesture to not get your panties in a wad just because a black woman goes to the head of the line at Walmart while you wait 5 minutes, Lily-white?

I'm not going to stretch that metaphor for you any more. I think it's pretty clear. It's not really about lines at Walmart .... and yet, it is. If a black woman can't go to the head of the line at Walmart without Lily-white clutching her pearls and fainting, then how the hell are we ever going to fix the fact that black women have to fight harder than anyone for a place in line at all?

What I hope is that Lily-white learned something from the barrage of comments she had to endure before she left the group. And I hope maybe some other women read those comments and learned something too. If nothing else, maybe Lily-white's faux pas provided an educational experience. It certainly made me think and react.

I hope next time Lily-white has an opportunity to let a black woman go to the front of the line, she will think twice about how often she's been at the front of the line herself for no other reason than she was born with lighter skin. Because let's be honest, that's no reason to always be at the front of the line. Women have to share that line with each other, because we've all been held back from the front of the line, and black women most of all.

That's all I want to say tonight. Share the front of the damn line. Those billionaires who own Walmart are the real enemies, our common enemies. They're the ones who are controlling our access to the lines that matter -- the ones the most of us aren't even standing in. The enemy is not the cashier who works there and is certainly not the woman who was behind you in line, Lily-white. Focus on what's really important. We have a lot of work to do. Together.