I am an Island of Racist Confusion
Walking the lakeshore, troubled by insults, I met a sage.
The morning was sharp, the stillness of the air was crystal. I gazed over the sleeping lake, its surface was still, lost in thought, the morning was held in a gasp of suspended time. The olive green blanket was deep and nourished a wealth of life and murky mystery, though this morning it was docile and contemplative.
I felt the lake was my reflection, my clenched consuming thoughts. Plagued by what I had seen the night before I came to the shoreline hoping for solace or some perception of solitude or where to find it. The understanding I once cherished, buried itself in a pit of seething. Dissatisfaction and disgust lingered like an angry cataract on my soul. The view of life was hazy and filled with clouds of disillusion while a tempest toiled with my perceived morality.
The grass along the shoreline crunched with innocence, encouraging me to walk and enjoy the splendor of the morning.
Following the shoreline, I traced my way along the edge as if traversing two worlds. One world was infused with substance and firm resolve residing in the sleeping, stoic oaks supported by the scowling granite shoreline. The other world, lapping against the granite base, was the lake’s surface hovered in a melancholy of desire to understand, to comprehend.
I rounded a rock, smooth and polished by aeons of rushing water and withering time, to find a hunched figure with its back to me. It sheltered on the lee side of the car-sized boulder.
The figure shifted as if startled, but confidence or a natural knowing ebbed through it and I saw the tension relax from the sinewed limbs. The figure remained facing away, consumed in thought.
I ventured a simple, “Hello.”
The reply was slow like gravel tumbling through vocal chords. “Good morning.”
“Fantastic morning isn’t it? So calm and peaceful as if nature was welcoming us to drink in her glory.”
“You read too much.”
“Sorry? I was just saying a simple — “
“Saying a simple truth, observing the obvious, detailing it. What gives you the right?”
“The what? The right? I can say what I please.”
“As can I. Or do you deny me that?” The figure’s aged bones creaked to a slow unsteady stand and then leaned back against the smooth surface of the rock. There was a plastic coffee stir stick protruding between its lips and the teeth ground the little sliver with a maniacal force. The tension ripping through the gripped jaw, though not evident in the body, was rampant. “What right do you have to express your thoughts and not consider mine?”
I was stunned to see how quickly the situation had deteriorated. “Look, sorry, I meant no offense.”
“And yet you caused it.”
I felt frustration shake within me. “How? I just wandered by. Chill out for shit sake.”
“Your choice of words is beyond ‘shit’ I would hope. You appear educated or at least molded by institutions and trained into one able to race down the prescribed channels.”
“I don’t need this, I was just walking.”
“Were you? Or were you thinking and trying to find a solution.”
“My thoughts are my own.”
“How fortunate. The arrogance of your position. A white liberal male born into wealth and an Icarus like assumption of providence.”
“You don’t even know me yet think you have the right to judge me, besides, that is a bit heavy for a lakeside stroll. Not what I expected in the least.”
“And what was your expectation? Did you stroll out here and come across an aged, greying individual and expect idle, brain-addled pleasantries. Words of so little value as to render them as meaningless as the trendy protests that rampage across social media in the same manner smallpox decimated the minds and lives of the North American Indian?”
I was staggered. “No, I — “
“Your type disgust me. Your level of ignorance and disinformation is only exceeded by the vapid causes you chase in a misunderstood pursuit to absolve yourself of the actions of others in a distant past and thereby excuse the calamity of ignoring the present.
“I don’t ignore the present I am very in tune with my world, thank you very much.”
“Really?” He pointed toward me. “You have a BLM cap on your head. Wearing it is your attempt to show that you’re an adjusted and conscience individual, when in truth you just pay lip service to something you don’t understand.”
“Look mister — “
“Call me Jake, please. We need not be formal.”
I drew a slow breath. I would put this old fart right. I have an open mind and was more than willing to make him aware of it. “Look, Jake — “
“I can see you are already riled up. I have uttered a few words and you are steaming like a forgotten kettle. Speaking of which, would you like a cup? I have some coffee on my camp stove around this massive rock. It’s a nice sheltered area.”
I felt my guard drop and I nodded slowly as the old figure turned and took two rickety steps across to his little haven. “Thank you, that would be lovely.”
“Lovely, would it?”
I felt my ire raise again. The crotchety old goat was as obnoxious as he was intriguing. The metal cup he passed me was blue with white speckles. A few brown burns had aged the cup to a condition that would make it outrageously expensive in trendy shops. He waved me to a jutting rock to sit and made his way over to a lower area and gazed over the lake.
I followed his gaze and realized the spot he had chosen was unique. The vista on display lulled my disquiet.
I sipped the coffee. It was burnt but very pleasant and awoke my urge to explain myself, to enlighten the old boot. I tried to think what my father would have called him… a sourpuss. No, I thought he was a boot, weathered, worn and ill-fitting. He was a blister on the back of the heel of my conscience. “You have no right to make rash judgements about my cap or my commitments.”
“Good bit of marketing that. Did you buy the T-shirt, too? A sign, a banner? Maybe even, God forbid, a mug. Somebody’s making a few bucks off the guilt of the disgruntled mass.”
I had bought two T-shirts but was too ashamed to say anything. His facetious comments were bitter reminders of last night.
“Don’t block it out. Your sense of paltry understanding is admirable, albeit pathetic.”
“How can you say that? How can you take a swipe at having a conscience, a shot at the mistreatment millions suffered at the hands of slave traders, part of our history, the fabric that helped build this country.”
“Money built this country, greed and avarice built this country, and continues to build it just like every society around the world. Sorry to break it to you, but your little backyard is not the be all and end all of the globe. Money built it, European money; German, English, Spanish, French and even the Danish. Don’t forget the Portuguese they were the biggest contributors to supplying the backs that you say are the fabric of the country.”
“Millions of slaves were brutalized and abused into working and building this country.”
“I don’t deny it, but you should check your facts, do not taint them with your emotions.” He leaned forward. “More coffee?”
I held my cup and watched as the steam drifted from the cup’s brim and lost itself against the backdrop of the lake. “Thank you.”
“Depending who you source, it is between 400 and 600,000 slaves that landed here. Most of the ten, twelve or fifteen million went to Brazil and the Southern Americas. Sure there were millions taken from the ‘bite’ of Africa, sold into slavery in their home country, but far more are enslaved today than were ever taken in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. That’s what you are referencing isn’t it?”
I grunted and gave a cursory nod.
“Please, grace me with conversation not monosyllabic grunts.”
Our eyes met and yet I had no compunction to speak. The previous night’s altercation was fresh, like a wound unable to form a scab, reluctant to heal.
“You assume the unfortunate millions were rounded up like cattle by sailors, and then stripped and forced into shackles. Ripped from their families, their home, their lives, they were herded onto ships. They were sold, not rounded up. The Portuguese did a bit of rounding up but most of the unfortunate were victims of raids by local fiefdoms who profited immensely off the subjugation of other tribes and the selling of captives. Lives traded for guns, alcohol, trinkets.”
I cut him off. “Brutality is brutality, an injustice is an injustice, regardless of who commits the crime.”
“Remember you said that, when the guilt of your conscience urges you to grasp a cardboard box and pen to march for salvation.”
“You’re a bitter old throwback.”
“Name calling? Labeling me in order to dismiss me? Is that the best you can offer? You hear only what your emotions want.”
Pressure built behind my eyes. I felt the blur of anger and the rush of wanting to attack, to prove myself a better person. “I have a clear conscience. I am not riddled with guilt. I do not single out others for abuse because they are a different color or religion. I am not a plantation owner who brutalizes other humans.”
“Then what are you?”
The lake was gone. Red flowed around my eyes as a desire to lash out clenched my jaw.
“You run around proclaiming innocence and yet you are labeled as the evil white oppressor. Are you an oppressor? Do you wake each morning and consciously or even unconsciously set about the abuse of others.”
“Of course not.”
“And yet you are labeled the abuser. Is that not what this is about?”
The argument and abuse on the internet last night tore at me. I was labeled without being understood or even considered. My life, opinions, and freedoms were abused. I stared at my coffee. How could I possible see myself as a victim? I knew society was unjust. Every society is unjust, intolerant and discriminatory in one way or another, but I had no right to profess to be a victim. Yet I felt abused, wrongly insulted. Double standards abounded by the emotional eruptions of the few to paste, to tar and feather the many.
“Your mind swirls it anger. Yet you look back at the hundreds of years past, the dehumanizing slavery and demand some form of restitution. That is admirable but where does it take you? Some will feel gratified, some will feel an accomplishment has been achieved, but where is your change? If you feel guilty for the actions of ancestors three hundred years ago that is on you, but society should feel more guilty for the allowance of slavery and rampant discrimination today, not then… today.”
I drew an angry breath. I only wanted a stroll. How had it come to this?
The old codger’s cup pointed at my face and his eyes ground into me. “Don’t dismiss me.” His lips tightened. “Don’t you dismiss me. Your harbored guilt that people want to shackle you with is your burden to carry, it is your choice to carry it. But it is society’s burden to rectify and call out the slavery that is rampant today.”
I stared at the figure it was hunched toward me. A hyena like poise arched its back. His mouth virtually watered with aggressive intent.
“There are more slaves held under the thumb of their oppressors today in India and China than were ever transported across the transatlantic slave route. Some estimates put the number worldwide at over thirty to forty million. Triple the slave trade. That is on-going abuse.” He shifted closer. “Where is your conscience in that? Where is your baseball cap and placard protesting that?”
I felt my mouth attempt to form words.
“Choose your battles before you buy the trendy cap and T-shirt.”
“You have no right to abuse and insult me this morning, not any morning.”
He leaned back and dismissed me with a wave of his cup. “I have every right. You like the other seven billion on the planet are allowing the 1% to financially enslave you. You are willing to be treated as pawns. You run to the institutions of finance, of education and beg to be groomed into mediocrity.” He jumped to his feet and waved his arms to the heavens as if possessed. “Enslave me. Make me an economic slave! Give me a crippling mortgage, a student loan, unreachable healthcare, a shack to sell my soul to and live on the crumbs tossed by the wealthy elite in my dotage.”
I sat back stupefied by the depth of ignorance that glimmered in my mind. My ignorance. When I next glanced up the haggard figure was standing over me gazing at me as if I was a wounded doe pleading to be butchered to end the madness that raged in my mind.
“No, my lakeside friend, you are not a slave trader, you are not an evil mind harboring intentions of abuse. You are a victim, like the billions of others, of greed and avarice. You are the economically raped. You are the financially shackled hordes laboring in the wheels of corporate subservience. You are to be pitied, not admonished.”
I set my trendy metal cup on a rock near his fire and crossed to the water’s edge. I was desperate to thrash out an understanding from the tumult that consumed my mind. I gazed across the stillness. In the lake there was a small island, no bigger than a tennis court. I thought it was me. My personification drifting, surrounded by a sea of seething injustice. Was my island sinking? Was I being discredited, discarded, and disassociated for trying to understand why there has to be a difference based on color? By extracting the ‘color’ issue from the discussion of enslavement were we not exacerbating the very issue itself? Like prodding a dancing bear, am I meant to react and bite? I had taken a bite last night. The accusation of being a privileged white male, the epitome of the enslaver, the bigot, the racist had gored my pride, my being. I had snapped back and was ashamed of the method of my reaction, though not the justification of the content. I am none of that which was attributed to me apart from my melanin levels and gender, but I am culpable of buying into the argument of righteous protest without looking at the current state of abuse and society’s inequalities of wealth.
The water was high on the small island. It was just a smattering of trees and grasses, a few rocks. If it was meant to be me then I was insubstantial and yet I was there I existed. I had a right to be heard.
I turned back to the old sage.
There was nothing, no fire, no trendy cup, no withered, challenging old being.
All that remained was thoughts and questions. I was reassured by the thought that what mattered most on my resume of life, of being — was to be myself.
I would walk the shoreline with my thoughts and questions kindled anew.
Thanks for reading.