A Moment of Reckoning
My University student days moonlighting as a Taxi driver are pretty much a blur. Yet, some incidents will remain indelibly engraved in my memory no matter how hard I try to shake them off.
On a dreary winter day, I picked up a gentleman from the airport. He looked like your typical clean shaven white middle aged man. His straight brownish hair was neatly parted to one side. His face was accentuated by thick lensed prescription glasses that would make one an easy target of school yard bullies. He carried no luggage except for an intimidating black leather briefcase. His Seemingly expensive suit looked freshly ironed for someone who has just hopped off an airplane. He was either going to a job interview or a funeral, I speculated. As I came to
Find out, I was spot on about the latter. I don’t claim to have a crystal ball but my sense of guessing got progressively fine-tuned after driving Taxi for a while.
We had a brief mundane exchange about Boston’s erratic weather patterns immediately after he told me where he was headed. He was going to what used to be a predominantly Black neighborhood before it got completely gentrified. Low income families were priced out and pretty much displaced from the only place they called home. This is a neighborhood populated by people who held full time employment, yet were barely scraping by. America is visibly segregated along the lines of race and income. I used to live in that same neighborhood as a new immigrant. I was puzzled by how none of my neighbors were white. I later learned that it was because none of them were high income earners either; a form of zip code apartheid, if you will. The mighty American public relations machine has always excelled at hawking a fabricated image of diversity and racial congruence.
Watching an elegantly dressed, well-groomed white man going to a poor black neighborhood was enough to provoke my curiosity. I didn’t want him to think that I was prying into his business. I didn’t want to live up to the reputation of a nosy cab driver. “is this a residence you’re going to or a place of business” I asked. He explained that the address was that of a church. His answer caused my brain to spawn even more nagging questions. I couldn’t just be blunt and inquire about what it is he was doing in a black church. “Is there a special service on a weekday” I slyly asked. In a broken voice he explained that he was going to pay his final respect to a Judge he clerked for as young attorney. This was obviously a grim occasion; I no longer felt the need to beat around the bush. I had to engage him in a frank discussion. He told me that this was an African American Judge who took him under his wing and taught him all the ropes. He went on and on about how extremely smart and giving his friend used to be. He spoke very highly of the late judge , gave him full credit for advancing his own career, and sighed heavily at the end of every sentence. I wanted to comfort him but didn’t know how. My English was very limited and I certainly lacked the vocabulary germane to bereavement circumstances. His sorrow was palpable as he had his chin buried in his chest. off the cuff, I suggested that he may find solace in shedding some tears. I assured him that this was a judgment free space and that he should feel no reservations about wearing his heart on his sleeve. He immediately burst into tears. I have never seen a grown man wail the way he did. I could see the love and admiration he had for his late friend and mentor. This was pulling at my heart strings. I was also having my own moment of grief. It downed on me that I no longer questioned the racial divide that runs deep in American society. In fact, I had made peace with it and unconsciously accepted it. I had normalized this racial fragmentation to the point that a simple event of race mixing seemed like too much of an aberration. I felt repulsed, ashamed, and just completely disgusted with how I have tacitly accepted American society’s racial reality. I had been served up a distorted view of how things ought to be and, like a fool, I eat it up like cotton candy. I realized that I had let my guards down while the dominant purveyors of public opinion were stealthily molding my perceptions. Whether subtle or overt, messages sent the powerful media and school systems often reinforce racial realities and promote a hierarchical view of society where segregation, for example, becomes deeply internalized. Instead of being inquisitive about the sharp racial cleavages that characterizes my surroundings, it was rather a white man going to a black neighborhood that gave me a rude awakening. I realized that this was no different than the scenario of a black man strolling inside a posh store and all gazes and security cameras go into zoom mode. Similarly, I went into alert mode simply because a white man went into a black church. How in the world did I capitulate without any pushback? I wasn’t raised like this!!! I nauseatingly protested.
I discovered that I was too indifferent to care about this issue since, I thought, it didn’t affect me directly. I have fallen into a state of mental complacency. I became intellectually lazy and stopped challenging or questioning the dominant truth especially one peddled by hegemonic institutions.
At one point, we were both tearing up, but not for the same reason. He was grieving the loss of a dear friend. I was mourning the loss of my ability to think critically. I never thought I would stoop down to this level of mental callousness. Upon reaching the destination, I stepped out of the taxi to give him a firm consoling handshake. He pulled me towards him and gave me a crushing hug instead. He then softly whispered a heartfelt expression of gratitude. He was touched by the empathy I showed him. I didn’t know what to say in return. He couldn’t have known that I was rather mad at myself for not vetting whatever is being shoved down my throat, and whatever it is that I am compelled to perceive as normal. This incident was an important watershed in my life. I have since deliberately raised a higher fire wall in the face of all dominant narratives. I now scrutinize everything to the point of obsession.
