What could go wrong?
As I left the office on Santa Monica Blvd. in Los Angeles and proceeded to walk to my car, a white male sitting in the passenger seat yelled “nigger” as he passed by. I laughed.
It wasn’t my first encounter with the word. As a senior at West Memphis High School in West Memphis, Arkansas, a white classmate called me a “nigger” after I refused to give him my seat in choir. No one budged. It was as if everyone heard it, but no one wanted to address it. There’s a consensus that this behavior is expected in the South — that it’s commonplace. But on the West Coast, there’s a collective thought that racism doesn’t exist, and if it does it’s only in subtle shades.
While studying for my master’s degree in journalism at the University of Southern California, I met several black students who were reared on the West Coast. Because many had grown up in multi-cultural neighborhoods and schools, they often said they couldn’t relate to my experiences. In their eyes, their upbringing with people of white, Hispanic, Asian and other backgrounds thwarted racism in their environments. “The West evolved faster than other parts of the country, so we didn’t experience it the same,” one student said.
Yet, during my one year of study at USC, I was present as the campus erupted into racial discourse as the then-student body president spoke out about a racial slur that was hurled at her, as students wrote articles about being turned away from parties because of their skin color, and as some discussed experiencing microaggressions. I was not far behind having to offer up a smile on multiple occasions as professors and students would tell me how “proud” they were that I was “so articulate” as if I was an anomaly. People would ask me how was I affording a USC degree, and I had to explain why being a black man can be frightening, often to people who would tell me they didn’t understand the Black Lives Matter movement and that black men don’t have it any worse than whites.
Despite the blindfold many wear and the Utopian melting pot people have created as a shield, racism is alive and well on the West Coast. California was not immune to racial injustices, lest we forget the destructive segregation practices that have left blacks in impoverished communities such as South Central, where police-community relationships are nothing less than hostile and the infamous Rodney King beating and Watts Riot that spurred afterwards reflect the black community’s anguish over decades of mistreatment.
After meeting with my friend and having dinner at the event, I recounted the incident to him. “Wow, this just happened an hour ago and you just said it so casually like it was nothing,” he responded. Even in that moment, I laughed. I laughed because in the moment that young man called me a “nigger,” he sought to stimulate a feeling of shame and worthlessness in me. But I found strength. I found myself to be so firmly rooted in who I am that I could not be moved. I could not be uprooted. When I laughed, I took the power.
