It Can Happen Anywhere
By: Jennifer Willis
Tags: Racism, Alabama, Raceinamerica, New York City

December 23, 2020

I read an article today in The Cut about an incident that happened in our neighboring town this summer — https://www.thecut.com/article/montclair-new-jersey-permit-karen.html?fbclid=IwAR09Hxqe2CykyE0N17_a9R-selpo0neCcCvBsiXaTXkHNLvRZvq2YlRly8k#_ga=2.253345728.893237782.1608499225-92040880.1608499225.

It reminded me of a story I’ve never written down.

I’ve long thought of Alabama as my personal 9th circle of hell — a place where I faced a racial crucible and emerged forever changed.

But that’s only part of the story.

I always loved New York City. I had a cousin who lived there when I was a child and we visited frequently. I was taken with the bright lights, the hordes of people, the streets pulsing with life and possibility. Columbia University was my first, and only choice for college, in part because I wanted to live in the city. After college, I stayed for law school. But by the time I graduated, I left and swore I would never return. New York had broken my heart in a way Alabama never could — because I had loved it.

I grew up solidly upper-middle class, in a midwestern suburb. My school and my neighborhood were diverse. I wanted for nothing and I traveled the country with my parents in a bubble of privilege. Of course, I knew about the racial history of America and I saw some of if through the exposure my parents provided — tutoring at a inner-city school, building homes with Habitat, interning at the Justice Center. My parents were also full of stories of race-in-America — my dad not being allowed on the base at Camp Lejune without a white escort when he served in the Marine Corps in WWII; a cousin drowning in a river because he and his siblings were not allowed to swim in the white-only pool.

I heard their stories.

I believed them.

But they felt distant, like a past America had outgrown (or at least was outgrowing).

Then I spent a summer in Alabama, after my first year in law school. I expected the work, on death penalty appeals, to be difficult. But I underestimated how difficult and I overlooked entirely what it would mean to practice law and live in the deep south. The constant confederate flags, the highways and schools named after their generals, “the war of northern aggression”, being ignored in stores and passed over to help white patrons, being called nigger to my face.

The heat was oppressive and so was the place. It was a long, hard summer, but again, that’s only part of the story.

I drove out of Alabama at the end of the summer and back to New York, but race-in-America followed me. My blinders, honed over a lifetime of privilege and protection, were gone. Followed around stores. Watched in the overhead mirror. Seated in the back near the bathroom when there was a free seat near the front of the restaurant. I’m sure it was always so.

But I never saw. Never noticed.

And then there were the cabs. This was before uber, when your options in the city were yellow cabs, which could only be flagged down, and limo service, which could only be scheduled with a few hours of advance notice.

The cabs in New York City would not stop for me.

Actor Danny Glover sued about exactly this in 1999 — https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-11-04-9911050012-story.html

As for me, I remember going out one night with the then boyfriend (now husband). I’m not a fancy-shoe girl, but I wore them that night. We were only going about 20 or 30 blocks, so it didn’t seem worth riding the subway. We started to walk but then tried to hail a cab when my feet began to hurt (fancy shoes tend to do that). But the cabs wouldn’t stop. Not for us. At one intersection a cab drove right passed us and picked up a white woman at the next corner.

We walked the entire 30 blocks, sore feet and all.

I needed to buy a printer and in the pre-amazon days that meant you went to the store. I was somewhere on 5th Ave with my large printer box desperately trying to hail a cab. One by one they streamed by. Never stopping. And then one drove right passed me to a white woman 30 feet further down the block. She was tall, thin, with brown hair about shoulder length, brown jacket and a green hat. I’ll never forget her because it was the first time I felt what I’ll call racial-rage. The minute that cab stopped for her, I hated her with every fiber of my being. She had done nothing other than raise her hand. She had done nothing other than be born cloaked in a mantle of racial privilege that would forever benefit her and disadvantage me.

As I lugged my heavy box down the street and onto a crowded rush hour subway, I hated her.

But that’s only part of the story.

I was heading home for winter break on December 23rd, 21 years ago today. I wheeled my suitcase out of my law school dorm and down to the corner to catch a cab to LaGuardia (had it been JFK, I could have taken a train, but not to LaGuardia, not from NYU). It was chilly and there was a light snow. I pulled my coat closed and my hat snug over my head and raised my hand in the air.

The minutes ticked by. One after another. Cabs drove by. But they didn’t stop. Not for me.

One, two, ten. I stopped counting when the 14th cab with its on-duty light on passed me. After 45 minutes, frantic and worried about missing my flight, I went back to my building.

I asked the doorman for help. He walked into the snow and raised his hand too.

But his hand was as black as mine and no cab stopped. Not for him. After 10 minutes he went back inside.

Alone, feet freezing in my boots, I stood for another 45 minutes with my arm raised in vain. At one point a black bike messenger rode past me. “Good luck, sister. You know how it is,” he yelled as he passed.

I didn’t know. Not really. Not until exactly that moment.

I finally came inside and called the boyfriend. He said he could book a limo service for the morning, but that I couldn’t get one that night for at least another two hours. I called the airline to change my flight. I hadn’t missed it yet, but there was no way I could get there on time. I had to speak to three people to make them understand.

Yes, I know its the holidays.

I did plan in advance.

I did leave early.

You don’t understand. There are plenty of cabs in New York City, just none for me.

I took the limo service to the airport the next morning and I caught a flight home on Christmas eve. And I swore I’d never hail another cab in New York, and I never did. I also swore I’d never go back after graduation, but that vow I only kept for 15 years.

But that moment, in the snow, that was the moment I understood.

It’s when I truly knew at last that race-in-America could not be superseded, could not be overcome. I don’t think I ever believed in respectability politics, that if you pull up your pants and speak a certain way you’d be safe. But maybe I did, just a little. Maybe I thought that if I was a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, if I earned my way into one of the best law schools in the country, if I lived in the North, in a city, in one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world, race wouldn’t matter.

But it wasn’t just my parent’s generation and it wasn’t just Alabama. It was everywhere and everywhen, omnipresent and omnipotent. I hadn’t known and I hadn’t seen, but race-in-America, racism-in-America was always there. It’s the train that’s never late.

I returned to New York years later, because New York wasn’t really the problem. Alabama wasn’t really the problem.

Racism was the problem.

That’s the whole story.

And it can happen anywhere.