DUers of Color: Tell Your Story

[curious_citizen]

157. DU of color discussing living while black

Last edited Wed Apr 25, 2018, 02:35 PM - Edit history (1)

I will give several nominally ridiculous recounting of my living while black and being called out negatively for it. I am a 60 yr old professional black male. I have been fortunate enough to have traveled extensively during my career.
1. On my second day at a college in milwaukee, wi, another freshman and I decided to ride our bikes around the neighborhood to get a lay of the land. Our campus was on the east side of town near Knapp street of Laverne and Shirley fame. We ride and have a great time, except the ride/walk back up the hill from the lake. Anyway we get to literally the front of our dorm and a police car fires up his siren right behind us. He gets out and proceeds to ask us for our bicycle licenses. Telling us we needed to have our bikes registered to ride them. Of course we called bs, however he proceeded to write us tickets for riding our bikes. He asked for our names and I proceeded to give him the main character from the movie Shaft's name (Richard Roundtree) and my friend gave him some other fictitious character as well. We were really trying to figure out why this guy was giving us tickets. Later on we realized that the only black persons ,other than the help,on that side of town, were Milwaukee Bucks basketball players, Kareem Jabar being one at the time. Those guys didn't ride bikes around town. Milwaukee actually never improved relative to black people, they just stopped my car instead of my bike, that is why I no longer live there. I played basketball regularly with a young man that was killed by the MPD for being black and walking down the street near where a white Marquette coed was accosted. That was the first time I marched in protest of police brutality.
2. I am traveling with coworkers to a conference in Anaheim, Ca. We signed up late so all the rooms are booked for the medium to high end hotels so we ended up in a best western. We go the check in and I just happen to be the last of the 3 or 4 of us that were staying there. The desk attendant asks to see and copy my drivers license. Now all of the other coworkers swiped their corporate AMEX cards and got their keys, but for some reason this fool wants more from me. I make a big stink as well as my co workers. The attendant and manager remain firm in their need to keep a copy of my DL. So rather than give them money I just go stay at a Marriott about an hour away for the same price and I got points. I have not stayed in a BW since then.
3. I'm in New Orleans on a vacation with my mom and sister. Its been a hot day so I go for a swim in the pool and they join me with drinks. There are about 15 or so white teens in the pool at the other end. I am just trying to relax and cool off so I swim a couple laps then get out and talk with my mom. I do this a couple of times and my sister notices that each time I get in they get out. So to test the theory, I wait until they are heavily playing whatever they are playing, get in, and just do a couple of cross laps. They get out each time I get in. My sister and I turn it into a game for about 5 or 6 times. Then we get bored. But it wasn't the first time of swimming while black. Sometime in the 70s I was visiting some friends in west nowhere colorado. There was one public pool for the whole town. I was the only black teen in the area and we decided to go swimming. In order to get into the deep end the test was two laps of the pool for everyone but me. I had to do 5. I did them but was so tired I was ready to go after that. But I made sure that for the time I was out there that I went swimming in the deep end every day.
4. Living just outside of Youngstown OH, in a burb that someone interviewed on tv stated they had not seen racism there in the 50 years they lived there around the time of the 2016 elections. What a lie. But anyway, my son was in Kindergarten and since it was just him and I we used to have reading and math sessions as well as I taught him rudimentary chess. He was the only black kid in the school system at the time and he was doing well in class. He just didn't have many friends at school. We would go to discovery zone and he would see kids from his class and they were usually at a party for someone. He would play with them but never get invited to a party. So fast forward we get near to the end of the school year and the teacher suggests that he should redo the school year because he isn't socializing well. I ask if she allows the kids to pass out party invites, she says yes. I then ask if she has ever seen him receive an invite. She stammers and then says no. So the question is how is he not socializing, he plays with the kids but they don't invite him to things. Anyway she pissed me off and I contacted a headhunter and left just before school ended.
My son, fiance, and myself were walking in a park not too far from our apartment, tossing a ball or something. All of a sudden we see this rapid movement at least a hundred yards away from us. Some white woman was running to a park bench towards her purse and fell on her face trying to get there before we did. We hadn't noticed her, her purse, or for that matter the park bench. My son laughed and I let him because she had determined that a family playing while black was a threat.
I didn't stay too far from a mall. I would get up at 6am and run around the mall parking lot, well run, pant, walk, run. But anyway after a couple of months a state trooper decided to follow me, not close but at lease a hundred yards back. I noticed him but didn't confront him. This went on for several days. So I shifted to running around my neighborhood and no problem. After a couple of weeks I went back to the parking lot, primarily because it was well lit, and as a black guy I felt more comfortable. The trooper came back and just parked his car in the middle of the lot and watched me. It was annoying but after a while I just joined a gym. No need to give him some reason for jerkiness. Jogging while black
My coworkers would invite me to go to strip clubs on occasion. One of the most ridiculous things that occurred was the stripper that would not stroll on the side of the stage where the dark guy was. We stopped at this place and watched the women perform walking on the stage, then around the bar to the other side. They would get their tips and somebody else would do the same thing. Then this one stripper would walk on the other side and return, as a coworker noticed, every time I was with them she never made it to our side. So we had an asian guy come with us a few weeks later. He sat with some folks on one side while I sat on the other side. She didn't come out while we were there but as soon as we left she came out. Her loss. Watching strippers while black
5. Upstate NY, moved to a burb not too far from my job. Really nice area, schools are good, people are ok. I drive over to another burb to visit a friend and since I'm out that way I call another friend who lives near by to see if we can stop by this bar he has been raving about to catch a game. So we decide to meet. I have find the place but have a hard time finding some place to park. While I am looking a cop flashes me because I have a light out in the back. Ok so he asks me to step out so he can show me. In my mind I know its on the right or left side and all he had to do was tell me. But I get out and as I'm getting out the cop draws on me. I'm about 6'2 and he barely made the height requirement. So now I'm pissed, this guy is gonna shoot me about a tail light. I raise my hands and ask him to lower his weapon. He does but I'm enraged at this point. He says he was sorry, he didn't expect me to be that tall. WTF??. I looked at the taillight and left. I made noise but nothing happened with local PD. I just don't try to drive thru that town.
Another time another burb with my sons on a sunday on our way to listen to a friend of mine preach at his church. A cop sees us and does a u turn and flashes me. I pull over and he says I have light out in the back. Its was a buick park avenue with a light bar and about 8 lamps. So there was no actual violation but he wanted to see why we were in town early on sunday morning with our suits on. I accepted the ticket and he was still jabbering on until my friend, the pastor stopped to ask what the problem was. I had to go to court to get the ticket canceled
Go camping mid state at a private campground we usually passed' We were on our way to drop off my son and couple of things with my parents in another state. It was sort of impromptu so we didnt have firewood and some other stuff. We setup our site and left to get the stuff we needed. When we came back, the big bus/camper that was in the from of the campground was now partially covered with a confederate flag. The kids and adults all had on tshirts with some confederate or nazi insignia on it. Now mind you we were just stopping to have a relaxing fire, cook some marshmallows, and spend time with our son before he was away for a few weeks. We had no interaction with these people or their kids. So now my wife wants to take down our camp and leave. She calms down slightly when she realizes that we were taking 2 of my dad's pistols back to him and they were in a box in the truck. So we spent the night with loaded weapons and not sleeping because we had no idea of what these idiots were up to. Nothing happened, but I now only camp at state parks and always have a weapon of some sort. It takes away the serenity of camping for me but I enjoy the change of environment.
I could share adinfinitem however I will cap it to say that in several of these burbs my wife and I used to have people clutch their children as we walked pass so often that we would assumed that our expressions suggested that we ate white flesh.