A Journey Half-Done

Copyright © 2020

by Ralph F. Couey

First off, I have new windows going in today, so I'm wearing a mask in the house while the workmen are here.  While they began setting up, I jumped on the computer, only to discover that the facial rec software didn't know me.  Then I remembered.  The mask.  It was such a 2020 moment.

Anyway, Cheryl is finishing two weeks of vacation this week, and it's been fun to have her around during the day, and not just seeing each other when one of us is completely fogged in with sleep.  Tuesday, we drove over to Kaneohe to play pickleball.  This game, played primarily by people in our age group, is a hybrid of tennis and ping pong, is played on a court about 2/3 the size of a tennis playing surface.  The ball is sorta like a whiffle ball, plastic with holes all over and the paddles are hard-surfaced, about twice as big as the ones used for ping pong.  Cheryl has fallen in love with the game and I went through a beginners course with her last year.  At the time, I couldn't "hook" the game.  The rules were, to me, strange, counter-intuitive, and confusing.  I've played a ton of tennis over the decades, and it was hard to set aside those habits for this new endeavor.  I went a few times, but never really understood the game, so she ended up going by herself, usually when I was at work.  

But yesterday, we went together, for me not without trepidation.  I'm a guy, and therefore have little tolerance for looking foolish in front of others.  But after watching a couple dozen YouTube© videos, I felt game enough to give it a go.

It wasn't as bad as I feared.  I remembered most of what I had been taught.  The biggest challenge for me is staying out of the no-volley area just in front of the net.  In tennis, you charge the net and get right up next to it to (hopefully) intimidate your opponent into playing a more defensive mode.  I can't tell you how many killer shots I made, only to find out that I had trespassed into that area, called by players "the kitchen."  Still, the ladies we played with were tolerant of my errors, and despite some light-headedness caused by having to run, actually sprint for the first time in...years?...under the hot sun. I walk about 15 miles per week, but running is a whole new level of exertion.  I managed to survive the day, earning a high complement from my spouse, who said, "Good job, Honey!"

In one of the pauses between games, I was sitting on the pavement, head between knees, trying to calm my swirling brain.  The ladies were talking about the things ladies usually talk about.  I was half listening when the topic turned to their experiences in the Mainland, which is Hawai'i speak for the continental United States.  One of the ladies, a Filipino, had family in Arkansas and spoke of her visits there; of how she was stared at as she walked those streets.  In some cases, people approaching her stopped and turned around, or crossed the street.  The went to a restaurant for Sunday dinner, only to have the server assume that she was the maid, and treat her accordingly.  At church, people stared, and one woman came up afterwards and said, "I was sitting in the balcony and you really stood out!  What are you, anyway?"  Not "who are you," or "how are you," but "what are you."  This lady stared at her for a moment, and spat out, "I'm a woman."  And walked away.  Turns out, the lady was the pastor's wife.

Yeah, I know.  It's Arkansas.  But still...

As they continued to talk, they all had similar stories to share.  Cheryl talked about how it was to live in Somerset, a very small town in Pennsylvania, and be stared at constantly; how uncomfortable it was to walk into a store or restaurant and every occupant stop in their tracks, turn and stare.  She doesn't share these kinds of things with me when they are happening, I think mainly because she knows that even after all these years, I have a temper, and I would react aggressively to any slight towards her.  

Our middle daughter, who lives in the Denver area, had told us of times when she was mistaken for Hispanic, and thus treated like a kind of subhuman.  During the early days post-9/11, she was also mistaken for a Middle Easterner.  She, also has been presumed to be a domestic, even an undocumented alien.  She is Irish-French from my side, and Japanese-Okinawan from Cheryl, so both assumptions are more than a bit of a stretch.  Nevertheless, in those instances, and in the accounts from my pickleball friends, there was the same frustration: "Why am I not a person to these people?"

As I listened, I grew angry, then sad.  It's easy as a white person to look around and see that America of 2020 is way different than America of 1960, in terms of race relations.  The riots, fallout from the assassination of Dr. King, were a visual expression of unchecked rage.  All the prejudice, injustice, and idiocy inflicted over the decades boiled over.  

Are we where we really need to be today?  No way.  But progress, however slow, has been made.  That doesn't for a second change the fact that racist attitudes are beyond despicable.  Judging anyone by the group is stupidity on steroids.  

Being in Hawai'i, I've sensed some occasions when there was palpable racism directed at me.  I recently fired an eye doctor after one visit during which his hostility rolled off him in waves.  In his voice, his body language, and especially his eyes I could see the hate.   Because of the tremendous diversity here, it is one of the few places where a white person feels outnumbered, and knowing history the way I do, I know that every group carries its own emotional baggage.  Someone whose family was put behind barbed wire during World War II by the Democrats under FDR just because of their ancestry is not going to feel kindly towards people like me.  I get that, even though I wasn't alive when that happened.

Nevertheless, hearing the accounts from the ladies forced me into a different way of thinking.  Perspective is so very important if one is going to try to understand the world and the humans who inhabit it.  And it requires all of us to alter our field of vision to see things to which we would otherwise be blind, willfully or not.  The sad thing for me is knowing that many of the white people I know who are so vociferous about racial equality are among those who stare the hardest at people of other races when they appear in their communities.  I don't care what you say.  Your eyes tell the real story.

It saddens me to know that in the 21st century that we still struggle with racism.  That we haven't learned to accept each other as individuals; who have an inherent value as humans.  It also saddens me that not only is there violence towards African-Americans, but that so-called black-on-black crime in places like Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles and other places results in thousands of deaths and injuries every month.  Some of that is related to the drug trade, but a lot of that violence takes place between people who have never been taught the art of peaceful resolution.  That sounds really judgmental.  But my statement is firmly backed by statistics from Chicago PD and the FBI Uniform Crime Reports over that past 15 years.  

As a white person, I have to urge my fellow Caucasians to perform some self-analysis.  The next time you are out and about, when you see someone of another race, are you sure that you don't take a longer look, or feel inappropriate reactions?  Are you sure that you treat someone of color the same way you treat another white person?  Be honest.  Because I've seen us in action, and there are a lot of us who like to talk the talk, but can't walk the walk.

This rant, I guess stems from the feeling that these ladies of different races have never felt comfortable and accepted in the Mainland, and not just in the south.  They spoke of incidents taking place is so-called cosmopolitan settings such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York.  

Racism can't end by just reversing the flow of vitriol.  It can only end if we as a human race are willing to retrain our brains and hearts.

On Friday, we'll enter the third decade of the 21st century.  It's time for us all to remember that there is only one race -- the human one.  It's time for us to live the Great Commandment, to love one another as He loves us.  It's time for us to move on to a new era.

But mainly, I think it's time we just grew up.