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“Mr. Hoover. A pleasure”–pauses for a photograph with group. “Kids, this is Mr. Hoover,” a man says to his grandchildren no less. A woman shakes his hand and wishes him “Happy New Year.” I paused and said who am I reading about here–then it dawned upon me that I was reading about a convicted, cold-blooded, gangbanging murderer who elected to be a functional illiterate until the age of 22 and cofounded a political organization with another man who has been charged in the rape and murder of a woman in 1993, and a teacher of young children in this political organization was convicted of murder in 1976 and served 16 years in prison while his common-law wife heads another organization called “Save the Children” while he has done all that he could in destroying them. Then I began to understand what a Kafkaesque, topsy-turvy, through the looking glass, Orwellian, antithetical situation that we black people have gotten ourselves into.
I wish that we could understand how this affects our image in a larger society. I am a black male given to mildly “New Age” dress, complete with an occasional headpiece and earring, and when I go into a department store clerks will leave other customers and race straight to me with a very solicitous “may I help you” knowing full well that they suspect that I’m in there to shoplift or hold up the place. Even when I visit museums the security guards track me so closely that they almost step on my heels and I can never get a taxi, day or night, and I don’t file complaints with various civil rights organizations because I half agree with the driver.
