Since Anthony Broadwater (age 61) was exonerated for the brutal
rape of Alice Sebold, then 18, in 1981, I’ve been thinking about a few unsettling
experiences in my life. I’m wondering how well my moral compass would’ve held
up if they went differently. (Full disclosure, I haven’t read “Lucky.”) This
post is geared mainly toward other white people, especially other white women. I
describe these experiences in detail for family and friends whom I’ve never
told before, and they touch a number of sensitive race, gender, and class
nerves. For that reason, when I shared the link to this post on Facebook, I
adjusted the privacy settings to hide them from friends who might be needlessly
triggered. I’m airing these stories out, in part, because our prejudices lurk
and build in the things we don’t say. I’m publishing this post in two parts,
with my personal anecdote in the first part. For those who want to skip past
the anecdotes, my take-home message is in the second part.
Part 1
It’s hard for me to say enough good about Zeba Blay’s
sensitive and insightful piece for Jezebel, “What Does Alice Sebold Owe Anthony
Broadwater?” In light of my own experiences, this passage strikes me in
particular:
“We forget that there is a subtlety
and banality to racism that allows it to endure. It is too easy to cast the
then 18-year-old traumatized rape victim as some kind of mustache-twirling
villain. … This isn’t to say, of course, that Sebold’s actions were not
egregiously anti-Black, and that as a young white woman in a racist society,
she colluded with a criminal justice system that is more concerned with
punishing Black men — any Black man — than it is with due dilligence and
intentionality in handling such a delicate and complex crime. In her memoir,
Lucky, it’s clear that Sebold’s own biases and prejudices collided with the
reality of her assault: She writes about being afraid of ‘certain’ Black men
after her rape.”
Blay seems to believe, and I’m inclined to believe, that
Sebold sincerely thought Broadwater was the perpetrator when she accused him.
But Blay is still opening up a conversation about how Sebold’s internalized
racism preprogrammed her response to the trauma.
Also, after much digging, I rediscovered a passage I’d found
in a past Google binge, by Susan Brownmiller (yes, that Susan Brownmiller) from
“Against Our Will”:
“The Till case became a lesson of
instruction to an entire generation of appalled Americans. I know how I
reacted. At age twenty and for a period of fifteen years after the murder of
Emmett Till whenever a black teen-ager whistled at me on a New York City street
or uttered in passing one of several variations on an invitation to congress, I
smiled my nicest smile of comradely equality – no supersensitive flower of
white womanhood, I – a largess I extended with equal sincerity to white
construction workers, truck drivers, street-corner cowboys … Did not white
women in particular have to bear the white man’s burden of making amends for
Southern racism? It took fifteen years for me to resolve these questions in my
own mind, and to understand the insult implicit in Emmett Till’s whistle, the
depersonalized challenge of ‘I can have you’ with or without the racial aspect.
Today a sexual remark on the street causes within me a fleeting but murderous
rage.”
Go figure, this passage comes right after the one that
Angela Davis excoriated for portraying Till “as a guilty sexist, almost as
guilty as his white racist murderers.”
Two of my bizarre and unsettling experiences were situations I got myself into. I’ve told so few people about them because I’m mortified by my recklessness.
The first experience was in Manhattan, KS in 2005, when I was
21. I was out of college, working my first full-time professional job, and
living in a tiny apartment, almost a studio, in a converted old house that I’d
been too naïve to realize was something of a slum when I rented it. (The
landlord treated me, a young professional woman, fairly well, but the other
tenants not so much.) On Halloween night, a Black neighbor down the hall – I’ll
call him Carl – was having a party, and later that evening approached me to
borrow some money. I’d had one or two brief, friendly conversations with him
since I lived there. He said he had an outstanding warrant in a neighboring
county, and he needed to pay the court about $90 or he’d be in some violation
and lose visitation rights with his son. He said something to the effect that
he’d made mistakes but didn’t want to lose touch with his son. I had no idea,
then or now, if he was telling the truth, and the way he told the story seemed
a bit theatrical. But I sympathized in the chance that it was true, and I
figured I wouldn’t starve on account of $90 even if he was lying, so I went to
an ATM and got it for him. As collateral, he and a friend brought a giant TV
into my living room (this was before flat-screens were widespread).
Later, a friend of Carl’s – I believe the same one who’d
helped him carry in the TV – knocked on my door and asked if he could hang out
for a while. I haven’t chosen a pseudonym for him because I don’t remember his
actual name. He said he was trying to get away from an annoying and persistent
woman at Carl’s party. Wanting to be polite and not wanting to be racist –
wondering if I’d have the same hesitancy if he were white – I let him come in.
We sat on the couch and chatted for awhile, and it was a charming and interesting
conversation. He said at one point he was pro-union and a Democrat. Afterward I
wondered if he said it because he knew it would strike a chord with me. Maybe
both are true.
It was getting late, but he asked if he could spend the night
on the couch, to stay away from the unpleasant woman at the party. Again,
interrogating my own reaction for racism and classism, I said yes. But I also
knew it was a stupid and reckless thing to do. So as I got ready for bed, I
quietly pulled a couple of my cheap steak knives from the kitchen and placed
them on the windowsills by my bed. A little while later, he came to the bed,
crouched down, and asked if he could sleep in the bed with me. I can’t even
remember now what I was about to say – I think I was finally going to say no –
when he reached over and cut his hand on one of the knives. I can’t even
remember why he was reaching – maybe for better balance – and I don’t remember if
I felt threatened by the reach. He pulled back in surprise and said “What the –
you have a knife?! You’re scared of me?! I’m scared of you!” And
he hastened to get out of the apartment with the crazy knife girl.
The next day after work, I came home to a torn envelope
halfway under my door. There was a note from Carl, saying he’d repaid the $90 in
full and wanted the TV back. But ostensibly someone had ripped the envelope and
stolen the money. I went in and started preparing dinner, and after a few
minutes I noticed that my laptop and all but one CD were missing. The door
didn’t have a deadbolt, only a knob lock, and the jamb was scratched as if it
had been jimmied. I called the police and filed a report for the stolen items,
and I told them about the previous night. I didn’t tell them I suspected anyone
in particular, because I didn’t – though I suspected that Carl or his friend
had scoped out the place for valuables for someone’s benefit when they brought
in the TV. The conversation I remember was unremarkable, but one officer said I
shouldn’t worry that excluding someone would be racist – “this is your castle,
and you’re the queen here.”
I don’t know if anything happened to Carl or his friend as a
direct result of my police call – I just wanted my stuff back. And I was relieved
when Carl retrieved the TV shortly afterward – it took up a ton of space and
I’d had no interest in selling it anyway. Months later, another tenant told me that
Carl was nervous about an impending landlord visit because had had some stuff
that was “hot” or “not legit.”
Carl’s friend stopped by several times after that. Once he stood
on the fire escape and called several times for me to come to the window. Once
he came to the door, and I had the handy excuse that I was cleaning for my
aunt’s visit the next day. The final time he came to the door, I was fed up and
didn’t have any excuse handy, so I just shut the door.
Obviously I thank my lucky stars that something much worse
didn’t happen in the situation I opened up with Carl’s friend. I don’t think he
planned to rape me, considering how taken aback he was by the knives. But for
all I knew at the time, he could’ve been a rapist. I do wonder how he treats
lower-income Black women, who can be mistreated with fewer social repercussions
than there would be for middle-class white women. I’ll impress upon a daughter that
she should always deny a strange man an entry to her space, or a date if she’s
not interested. Politely if she wants, but still – set boundaries. If he
happens to be Black and he thinks she’s being racist, it’s his problem if he
doesn’t understand why a woman by herself would take precautions with any man
she doesn’t know.
You’d think I would’ve learned from this experience, but I
had another experience with some similarities in late 2011 or early 2012 in
Iowa City, when I was in grad school. The young man in question was a Ghanaian
ex-pharmacy student; I’ll call him Abeiku. I can’t remember where or how I met
him, maybe at a café, but likely he struck up an interesting conversation, we
exchanged numbers, and maybe he called to meet up sometime later. He’d studied at
Howard University but I believe he’d dropped out. As I recall, his father was a
pharmacist and was somewhat frustrated that he’d fallen off track. Once I gave Abeiku
a ride home, but he was vague about where “home” was and said “Just let me off
here.” It was near the homeless shelter. My relationship with another man at
the time wasn’t exclusive, but I wasn’t interested in Abeiku that way.
One evening he called, or maybe we ran into each other at a
café. He asked if I wanted to watch TV with him and I said sure. But he didn’t
want to watch it with his roommates around, so he suggested we go to a hotel. Seemed
weird, but I decided to take him at his word – I could understand wanting to
get away from his roommates. And, again, I asked myself if I’d be as hesitant
if he was white. In my memory, we took a cab there for some reason – maybe we’d
met downtown and my car was back at the house. We might’ve started watching TV,
but at some point he made sexual overtures. Maybe he tried to kiss, and maybe I
kissed back to be a good sport – I honestly can’t remember. Somewhere in there
he exposed himself, and he asked “Have you ever been with a Black boy before?”
(His words – it’s possible he asked this at a previous time we’d met, rather
than at the hotel.) I recall being put off but not exceptionally offended or
threatened by the exposure – it seemed to make sense in context. But nothing
happened beyond that and he dozed off. I tiptoed around the hotel room,
gathering up my things so I could sneak out, but I dropped some coins and woke
him up. I can’t remember the exchange then – I think the gist was that he
realized now that I wasn’t interested but was dismayed that I was conveying it
by sneaking out.
Some months later, I got a call from Abeiku in jail. He’d
been picked up for fighting in the library and now he was being held on an
immigration charge. Maybe I was the only person he knew whom he thought would
have that kind of money. But I sure as hell didn’t have $6,000 for bail. Sometime
later he’d been transferred to another facility, and he sent me a pen he’d made
with a fabric cover and my name stitched on it. He may have included a note
that said that he was going to be deported to Ghana, or he may have called or
texted once he was back in Ghana.
I honestly don’t know why my memory of the evening in the
hotel is so spotty, since really nothing happened. It’s only now that I have an
inkling of why this experience was less unsettling than the one in Manhattan.
It’s not just classism and the buffering influence that educated immigrant
status has on anti-Black racism in America – Abeiku was respectful overall, not
intrusive. He wasn’t a stranger asking to enter an apartment where I was alone.
Even if my memory is wrong and we left from my house, I had roommates. And maybe
he honestly thought that a hotel self-evidently implied sex. Still, though, I
didn’t know him that well, and I couldn’t have known what his intentions were. That’s
why I still find it unsettling – because of what *I* did despite my own
discomfort.
The third incident that sticks in my mind was in Tampa,
probably in 2013. On the bus home from work, I happened to make eye contact
with a Black man who may have been in his 40s and I smiled. I noticed him
looking at me and smiling a couple more times after that. I got off at my stop
and was heading toward the intersection when I saw him step off the bus rather
abruptly. It seemed like he’d decided at the last minute to get off at that
stop. It was late afternoon and the area immediately around us was deserted. I
think we were in front of a motel. He hit on me in a deliberately charming,
velvety way. If I recall correctly, I told him I had a boyfriend – “Where is
he?” – I told the truth that he was in Iowa City finishing his bachelor’s,
since I’m not good at lying. He wasn’t deterred, but eventually I deflected his
advances and politely made my departure.
Most of the time, when I’ve blown a guy off who was hitting
on me, I haven’t feared for my physical safety, at least not consciously. But,
due partly to my own nature and partly to how women are socialized, I don’t
like to break guy’s hearts or be the unreasonable person who won’t even give
him a chance. Asking myself afterward why I was so unnerved in this encounter,
I certainly can’t rule out racism, but our isolation and the fact that he
seemed to choose that stop specifically to follow me were also factors.
My main interest with this two-part post is sexual assault,
not come-ons or catcalls, so I won’t spend too much time on the latter. As it
happens, I’ve personally experienced them mainly from Black and Latino men.
Maybe similar advances from white men haven’t stuck in my memory or I didn’t
pick up on them as readily, which probably reflects my internalized racism. I
know I’ve had advances from white men that were more subtle but in some cases
unsettling. Probably the biggest factor, as Roxane Gay has pointed out, is simply
that one person’s experience is highly variable and can’t represent the whole.
But … Meh, I’m not that interested in intellectualizing it
anymore. Such exercises are often a well-intentioned, convoluted, desperate
effort to prevent one’s experiences from reinforcing one’s prejudices. The fact
that there are cultural differences between men of different races isn’t that
complicated. Whether or not it’s objectively true that white men catcall less, that
kracken of a trope just isn’t so strong in my head anymore, that street
harassment and come-ons say anything deep or insidious about the character of
masculinity in any one demographic group. Likewise, I could be wrong, but I
don’t believe I saw Carl’s friend in every poor or working-class Black man I
encountered in later years.
But the way white women experience and make sense of these
street encounters, influences how we react to cases like Sebold’s. Sebold herself first became convinced that
Broadwater was her rapist when he greeted her on the street with a casual
flirtation.
Finally, a PSA to dudes everywhere – if you want sex, just come out
and say so. Don’t play these mind games with coded terms and cajolement. Don’t
try to trick us into having sex. Or, if you don’t want to ask and be rejected
outright, resign yourself to an evening that’s just Netflix and no chill, since
she probably won’t change her mind. Ask the waitress to split the check if you
prefer, but sex isn’t an unspoken quid pro quo for dinner and drinks. If that’s
what you want, find an independent sex worker who’ll tell you up front what
services she offers at what price. Truth in advertising.
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