by Toby Meuli
Everyone’s a little bit racist, sometimes.
Doesn’t mean we go around committing hate crimes.
Look around and you will find no one’s really color-blind.
Maybe it’s a fact we all should face.
Everyone makes judgments…based on race.
-Kate Monster and Princeton from the Tony-award winning Broadway musical, Avenue Q
I’m a little bit racist, sometimes.
Last month I reluctantly took my wife to a play in Hollywood a few miles from where we live. This week our once-adored Friday Date Night had become a chore. I mean, I was looking forward to being with my wife, but it had been one of those over-scheduled weeks that Dr. Phil warns us about. I didn’t want to go.
As my wife and I pulled into the parking lot of the theatre, I was thinking about how much I had to do that weekend and how I didn’t think I had the patience for a night of bad theatre. I knew several of the actors in the show and was desperately hoping to avoid, or at least navigate tactfully, an awkward post-play conversation if the show was less than inspiring. (i.e. “Did I like it? Well…did you like performing it?”) I figured I was in for a long night. The theatre’s parking is adjacent to a nightclub and the two share the lot, so while we drove in and looked for a spot, my already-low patience was tested while I maneuvered around the decidedly unhurried pedestrians of the urban nightlife.
As my wife and I got out of the car and were locking it up, a man came running up to us from four or five parking spots over. This guy scared me. Not because he startled me with his sudden approach, but because he was a muscular, linebacker-built, African-American man wearing a three-piece suit with his hair done in dreadlocks. And it was night. And I’m white. Although I live in Los Angeles now, I’m from an upper class, white suburban area where the MTV music awards were the closest we got to the hip-hop culture from which I assumed this guy came. So with sweat pouring down his brow and a clear sense of desperation in his voice, he asked me with a bit too much volume for our close proximity, “Do you have any water?”
Water? What? I thought that this was kind of a bizarre question at this time of night, in this parking lot. Maybe if we were at the gym working out or something I could understand this request. Instead of asking why he wanted water, I immediately jumped to a few unjustifiable conclusions: a) this guy was running a kind of scam that involved me giving him water and then he would sucker money out of me or something or b) he was somehow using the water (I can’t believe this went through my head) to help him make drugs in the parking lot. And I was pretty sure he had a gun. I didn’t see one, I just assumed. Based on these conclusions, I wanted nothing to do with this guy and was essentially nervous he would somehow hurt me or get one of his do-rag-wearing rapper friends to. I’d like to say I was valiantly looking out for my wife too, but I wasn’t even thinking about her. Just don’t hurt the boy.
After standing there silently for two or three seconds in fear and judgment, I answered his water question, “Ah, no. Maybe there is some water over there,” pointing vaguely to the vicinity of the theatre. He glanced up in the direction of my point and took off running again. I could tell he sensed my dismissivness when he yelled back at me, “Shit, man--my car’s on fire!” As if to say, “Shit, man—I’m not gonna hurt you.” It took a second for his words to sink in. Car. On. Fire. Before I could fully put the pieces together my wife said, “Uh, Toby, his car is on fire. Do you not have any water? Do you want to check?”
I turned around to see a long black sedan a few spots away with a small flame coming up from the passenger seat. I looked at this little dancing orange glow in shock. I’d never seen the inside of a car on fire before. It was like watching two toddlers playfully enjoy each other’s company while relishing a state of careless indifference to the outside world. After a few more endless seconds of staring at the fire, I instinctively grabbed my wife’s hand, turned, and began slowly walking away.
My wife, frustrated with me, stopped and asked forcefully this time, “Do you have any water in your water bottle in your car?” And I said I didn’t. But for the first time since we pulled into the parking lot about 30 seconds earlier, I thought about the question. I thought, yes, I had drunk all the water from my water bottle earlier that day and, no, I didn’t think I had anything else in my car that could help douse the flame.
In the seconds that I assured myself of innocence with my what-is-in-my-car checklist, somebody yelled from across the parking lot, “Get outta here, it’s going to explode.” My wife and I looked up again at the once childlike flame, which in seconds had matured into an angry teenage fire lapping up the entire cab. So we ran away from the burning car like everybody else in the parking lot.
As we joined the crowd across the street, I saw the Jamal Lewis-looking man who asked me for help only a minute ago standing feebly in the crowd with tears running down his cheeks holding a plastic kitchen cup half-filled with water. His eyes were fixed on the flames eating what was once an extension of his body in our car-centered town. It would be like having your legs broken in Manhattan. There were a few guys running close to the fire with cell phone cameras, dodging little explosions from the engine every few seconds, laughing and yelling about how they were going to post the footage on YouTube or sell it to one of those “real TV” cable shows.
It was horrible. Watching the car turn into a monstrous fireball before my eyes made me feel like I was in a bad movie. And I wasn’t the good guy. I had to get out of there. I walked slowly toward the theatre the way a rookie baseball player might walk to the dugout after he had struck out for the fourth time in an exhibition game and is pretty certain he’ll be cut.
A few minutes later my wife and I were in the theatre awaiting the performance while several audience members whispered about the fire. I sat there wanting to puke. I was so angry. I was angry with myself for not doing anything. I was angry at my self-centered mindset and exhaustion from that week. I was angry at those activities that made me tired. I was angry with that guy for somehow starting a fire in his car. And I was angry at whatever it was that had somehow made me so distrustful of people that aren’t like me. The worst thing though was my pre-judgment of the guy. He just wanted help. I didn’t even give him a chance to ask a question; in a split second I decided he was a thug trying to get a handout.
You might be thinking “you couldn’t have done anything anyway. You said you didn’t have water.” That’s right, I didn’t. But maybe I could have done something else. Maybe I could have, I don’t know, taken my shirt off and tried to swat the flame out, or I could have called the fire department, or I could have even run myself to find water. I can’t help thinking of a million small steps I could have taken to possibly help this guy. Maybe nothing would have worked, but at least I would have tried.
Where does Christ stand on all this? I don’t know much about miracles or what makes the supernatural work in situations like that in the Bible, but I do think Jesus seemed like a good guy and I’m pretty sure he would have been a come-through-in-the-clutch kind of person in that situation.
More than taking steps to actually put the flame out, what if I had been a bit less self-involved and looked at that guy like a person and not some sort of preconceived idea? What if I had seen him? That guy wasn’t a rapper, a thug or a drug dealer, especially in that moment, he was a guy who needed help and I did not give it to him.
It hurts to think about the reality of my instinctual response.
I can’t help think that if a white person who looked like me and communicated like me would have run up and asked for help, I would have seen him. It’s sad but true. For me, it is the difference between telling a homeless person a rehearsed, “No, man, I’m sorry,” when they ask for money or, on the other hand, stopping in my ever-important tracks and perhaps, I don’t know, maybe asking their name. Or asking, what do they need money for? Or, why do you need a ride? Or, no, I don’t have water, but what can I do? On the most basic level, I did not help that man because his skin was black.
So that night I sat before God and admitted I was a racist. Not racist in the KKK-sense of the word, but racist in the sense that I have unconscious walls around my heart where people of certain races, religions, or social groups are not allowed. I’m just a little bit racist. A socially acceptable racist.
I have a sort of hierarchy in my heart that includes those I am willing to love and accept, those I am not, and everybody in between. Those that rank low in the lovable system are usually those that don’t look like me, have different backgrounds (perhaps with accents), and have potential to hurt or challenge me in some way. And the high rankers are people who are usually white, those that I want something from, and anybody who thinks I’m cool.
Now don’t get me wrong, I want equal rights for all races and, believe it or not, I have several good friends who are homosexual and many whom are of different ethnicities. I would even honestly say that Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of my true heroes. But those things don’t change the deep parts of my heart. My racism exists in the dark indifferent depths of my being and is so amazingly easy to hide. Perhaps even encouraged in some communities.
So maybe there is something to what those Avenue Q puppets are saying. As much as it hurts, if I want to truly begin this process of healing, I need to say before God and everybody that I’m a little bit racist. I’m sorry, God, everybody. I hate it about myself. I’m sometimes amazed that I’ve gotten this far in life and haven’t realized it about myself. So now I am on a journey to rewrite the depths of my heart; to get my heart seeing the way it was meant to see, without bias. As people I guess we all may be a bit racist; let’s admit it before anyone else gets hurt.
