Most people I kicked it with casually didn’t even know. Unless they came to my spot and saw the family photos, Black folks never assumed my blue-gray eyes meant a white parent. They were too well-versed in the nuances of Blackness, the various shades, and permutations.
White people were more likely to get into it, like it was a reflex for them.
Are you mixed?
You’re biracial, right?
Where are you from originally?
And my favorite, the vague, twenty-first century version that implied rather than asked outright what they wanted to know: what’s your background?
Black people noticed but made no assumptions and mostly didn’t ask any questions. My boy, Lamar, was the funniest.
When he first saw a picture of my parents, he nodded in comprehension.
A’ight, a’ight, he intoned as he studied the shot of me and my parents at my high school graduation—mom and dad on either side and me in between looking like the perfect gumbo of them both. See, I thought them eyes was just some massa-in-the-slave-cabins genes poppin’ up.
That shit was funny, so we both laughed, and it never came up again.
“I don’t mind you asking,” I told Lila.
And I didn’t. It wasn’t like I repressed the sense of myself as biracial, but it was just something I carried with me always, which rendered it unnoticeable. Most of the time latent, but always present was the knowledge of two identities, though I was often relieved of that duality since America only identified me—and I identified myself—as a Black man.
Chapter Four
Lila
Kai has a mellow kind of energy, so that even when he’s talking about deep and difficult subjects, he comes across as perfectly chill. When we were talking about how we wound up at the protest, I was eating really fast because I had all this nervous energy, and I was talking too much, saying dumb stuff about breaking up the capitalist mindset or other jargony stuff like that. I was sure I was making a fool out of myself, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I was unsettled by being arrested of course, but also a little because of Kai.
I think it was because when we were walking over to the carryout, he did that chivalrous thing that some guys do, where if you’re closer to the curb on the sidewalk, they take your arm and gently maneuver you to the inside. His hand on my arm was gentle, like he was apologetic for touching me without permission. And then, because I stopped talking, he looked at me and smiled, and prompted me to continue with a little nod, and a soft: Sorry, what were you saying?
To make matters worse, at the carryout, all the cops made me nervous.
Even though I personally never had reason to feel genuinely threatened by a cop, and even though the one who took me in was practically fatherly, I still felt like I was in hostile territory. And feeling that way made me sad, because I’ve never been one of those people who view law enforcement or any other group of people as a monolith. Police officers … I mean, sure they’re part of a system of oppression but on an individual basis, there were good ones, honest public servants, trying to fulfill their duties with integrity. Right?
But that morning was the first time I looked at them and couldn’t even see their faces. All I saw was blue, and it brought me way down just thinking that all they might see when they looked at us … was Black. Not just the color of our clothing while we marched, but our faces. And maybe there were traits they ascribed to that Blackness, the kinds of traits that made them reach for their weapons, or feel inexplicable rage that they were themselves too scared to examine.
Maybe, I wondered, as Kai and I took our seats on the curb, they had always seen us this way? Even the Black cops. Like, does it change your perception of your own community when you’re a cop, and you’re Black? I think it probably has to. Even just a little bit. Maybe you feel pressure to overcompensate or perform or prove something to your colleagues. I don’t know.
Maybe it’s a process of being indoctrinated into a way of thinking bit by tiny bit and before you know it, the way you see the world is completely different, the way you see people who look like you is completely different. Or, that maybe you can turn it on and off depending on the context. Maybe it stays with you when you’re not even on the job. It’ll drive you crazy just thinking of it.
I know a lot of the activists from the north and west sides of the city say that the Black cops can be the worst ones. I used to be skeptical of that. But now, I’m not. Not because I’ve seen it for myself but because now, I believe anything is possible. I believe that when you have a badge, a blue uniform and a gun you can kill someone for no reason in cold blood in front of dozens of witnesses, and society will only shrug, and think, ‘he more than likely deserved it.’
And if they’re not shrugging now, it’s only because we took to the streets.
Those were the thoughts running through my head when we sat down. Everything was all muddled and jumbled; thought and feeling all mixed in together. I wondered whether I should be calling Tianna, even though her having not called me probably meant she had been picked up as well. And if not, she was hardly likely to be in a place to hear and respond to phone calls.
I thought of calling my dad, but I knew my mother would be frantic, and worried that my dad would read the pace and excitability in my voice
