Mr. Parker

How then can any white give the black persons in America their humanity back?  Perhaps only by confessing our sins—and the sins do fall on all of us, even me, even you, if you never treated a black person in America badly (or think you haven’t.)  

 I want to do something I almost never do, I am going to place a name on someone from my past, not a notable person, but just a common schmuck myself.  His name was Glen Parker.  I didn’t dislike Glen Parker, but Glen Parker disliked me.  He disliked me because I was white.  Just for that.  

When I worked for Arlington County on the road crews most of the foremen were white.  I think there was only one black foreman.  Of course foremen became foremen because the position was primarily seniority and I imagine before my time there had not been any black workers.  There were around sixty of us laborers I suppose who punched the clock.  Three of us were “white.” Though out in the sun all day all three of us were probably darker than three-quarters of the black Americans I’ve ever met.  At any rate two of us white boys were in the same crew.  Our foreman was white three to three.  

We were supposed to get a half hour lunch, but our crew tended to take an hour.   Hell, on Fridays, payday, remember we were paid every week and always on Friday?  ,well on Fridays our foreman took an hour for lunch.  Every crew I believe took an hour for lunch.  But our foreman wanted our crew to take the scheduled half hour.  

Now I need to point out our crew was different than the other crews. There was a large crew than did major construction projects, new roads and the like, and used a lot of heavy equipment.  The rest of the the crews were two man crews with a foreman, who repaired potholes and Arlington County in those days repaired potholes immediately.  Sometimes those crews had absolutely nothing to do and would sit in the yard all day so they could take two or three hour lunches and nobody cared as long as the potholes were fixed.  

Our crew did major repairs, but not whole street repairs,  with heavy hand equipment, gas powered bore drills, heavy rollers, etc.  to do major  road repairs that were from water cuts or streets that needed a section removed that was mot large enough to  And then we had to do a lot of shoveling of concrete and asphalt slabs onto the trucks.   As a result, (by design, I suppose) we were the five biggest guys in the yard.  If anyone needed an hour we did.  But the other white guy never had much money and he brought his lunch (except on Fridays) and I brought my lunch even on Fridays since.  But I needed the hour to get my breath.  The county didn’t like to pay overtime, but they didn’t like to live a repair unfinished and had a policy not to cone off a project and go home, it had to be finished before we could go home.  

Well we were late a couple of times and I suppose our foreman got some flack.  At any rate he blamed it on the three black guys always taking an hour for lunch.  We all worked together, but associated after work and on weekends, often going to one of the crew members’s home and playing some tackle in the backyard or some pretty rough basketball in the driveway.  I haven’t seen a basketball hoop on a garage door in a long time though.  But If Parker showed up, he wouldn’t play with us white boys, although I know he associated with the other blacks guys out of work.

Then we got a really bad delay one day because the asphalt facility shut down (not owned by the county) and everyone went home around ten o’clock.  But we had already cut a huge section of the road out and were told to stay until it was finished.  Two of the black guys went off for a very extended lunch.  Apparently they returned and found there was nothing to do and the foreman said come back in an hour.  I had gone with the other two crew members to the asphalt plant too try to scrounge enough asphalt to cover the hole.  

All we could find was a pile of discarded dried asphalt but we were able to borrow a burner that could heat the chunks that we broke up into chunks small (still heavy) enough to throw onto the truck and took the borrowed burner back to where we had cut out the road and began tossing the chunks of asphalt into the hole and I began melting them and the other two members began trying to smooth them.  But the hole was  still too deep for a smooth ramping  and the asphalt was still too lumpy.

The others had returned and leaving me on flag duty, the others went to try to scrounge some more asphalt and the foreman went god knows where.  Well I guess this time they got some good asphalt, I guess the asphalt company had repaired their equipment enough for a small run and were able to fill two  truckloads with quality asphalt.  We dug out the bad asphalt  and then put in the new asphalt and by seven pm (two hours late) the road was perfect.  

The foreman got a mouthful for our tardiness and once again he blamed it on the black crew members. So on Friday next we were told we would not be working but attending a meeting with the county supervisor.  Not our supervisor who ran the yard.   We were all picked up in two county cars and driven to the county offices to a meeting with some ranking honcho in the county.  His office was huge enough to contain six love seats (just enough for the six of us, (was that  the normal arrangement, or were they brought in for the occasion? I don’t know.) Ensconced in our own loveseats separated by several feet between each other;  and then even further away was the most massive desk I’ve ever seen.  We sat around in silence, not knowing if talking was permissible for perhaps an hour.  Finally a door in the back of the office (not the one we had entered) opened and a nice looking gentleman in a suit enters and sits at the desk.  He spends a bit of time looking at us all in our county uniforms, staring at each of us in turn, for several moments.  Then he introduces himself as Mr. (no first name) Honcho. 

“What’s the problem here?”

The foreman then states the black members are always late back from lunch.  I didn’t say anything because there seemed no need.  We do heavy work for five hours without any break, we need an hour for lunch.  All of the crew members stated that.  The foreman said we only supposed to have a half hour ane an hour was taken  that made us late sometimes. As I had said nothing (and by the way, no one talked over anyone else), but they all one at a time said we deserved an hour because we had no other breaks in a nine hour day (7 to 5).  

So Mr. Honcho asked me if I had anything to say.  “I agree with the others.  Five hours of heavy work and then three more is eight hours.  The other crews quit at four thirty, we quit at five.  That means we should have an hour from my reckoning, or get paid for eight and a half hours every day.”

“I see”, says Mr. Honcho. He picks up some papers from the desk and begins reading through them.  Silence for several minutes.  The he turns back to me “Why don’t you take an hour then? It says you’re always ready after a half an hour.”

“I never leave the site. I bring a sandwich and then I relax.”

“See, “ the foreman cuts in, “they could all be like him and (other white crew member who sometimes brought a lunch).”

One of the black crew members then says “You don’t bring your lunch” to the foreman.

Then Parker points at me and the other white crew member and says, “They bring their lunch because they’re prejudiced.”

“I’m prejudiced because I bring my lunch?” I ask somewhat incredulously, shaking my head.  Mr. Parker jumps up from his loveseat and says, “Yeah, why else are you accusing of us of taking an hour for lunch.”

“Did I do that?”

Mr. Parker rushes towards me. I stand up. We glare at each other for a few seconds. Nose to Nose. Nearly the same size.  I imagine nearly the same strength, if it had come to that.  But he had become a Mr. by standing up for himself.  I was just a mr. standing against him, I wanted the hour as much as he did. Could I fight a Mr.and prove he was right and that I was not even a mr. “You’re right, I am prejudiced.”

I sank into my seat and he walked back to his, facing me, not his seat, all the way.

What I did not say to Parker that day, what I should have said to Parker on many many days, or maybe only once might have been enough, what I never have said was “Forgive Us.”

All of us who are white, who think we are not prejudiced, that we never mistreated a black person in this country, why can’t we then at least say “Forgive Us.  They have been denied their humanness by Us.  And as part of that Us, I cannot be seen as not part of that Us. Can you see that?  It doesn't matter if you’re not prejudiced, or a closet prejudiced, the black Americans were the property, nothing more than the oil wells of the cotton fields, legally the property,  bought and sold property with a value placed on how many teeth they had, or if they might be a little afternoon snack for the purchaser  or whatever the hell they  might want to do with them. Saw them in half if it  suited him. 

And it was we long ago, whether the we of the I long ago, or the I of the we now, IT DOES NOT MATTER if we  can’t at least ask for the Us to be forgiven.

I am a determined believer there is absolutely no civility without asking for forgiveness if someone even perceives I have offended them.  Does it matter if I intended to offend them?  Not at all if they believe they have been offended.  The offense might cut too deep, the apology might not be accepted.  Even it is, it might not be anymore heartfelt that an apology, but the apology, heartfelt or not, should be mandatory as a first step in any reconciliation.  Kind of the Truth and Reconciliation.

But without the apology we are simply ignoring the wound, pouring salt into it by proclaiming I didn’t do it.  Every man owes every woman an apology for any woman or child who has been molested, it doesn’t matter if you never raped a woman,all women feel raped when any man rapes a woman.  

I drove enough women in my taxi and in my car as uber driver to know when a woman has been molested when they enter the car; or sometimes at frat parties a woman who has run out  out after witnessing her friend raped…so when they ask you, “Are all men like that?” of course the answer is “yes.”  No is unacceptable.  “Are you like that?’ “Yes.”  And maybe they’ll cry, maybe they’ll scream at you. Maybe they’ll hit you and scratch your face. And you let them.  Maybe they’ll just turn away and look out the window for awhile.

Eventually, though they have always finally said, “No you’re not like that.” “I am,” I reply. 
And if I know that, if I know being a man makes me a potential rapist, then I owe it to those women fleeing or having been a victim, that it is the We of men, not necessarily the I of any particular man, that is what rape is and always has been as the We of any action by an individual. 

So what do We, the white, think the I of white is not always a part of the We of white who creates the dehumanizing of the black person.  

The We must be as responsible as any  I in any We that the I is a part of.  The We of America is responsible for all of the I’s in America and whenever any of the I’s are excluded or demeaned or dehumanized then every I, as part of that We is responsible,

I didn’t do it, doesn’t cut the mustard. It cannot be what the law says or doesn’t say, justice can’t be only about the singular who is culpable, it has to be the We that enabled the culpability of the I, that created the injustice as much as about the I who acted culpably.  

We cannot say I have never acted prejudicially, because that is throwing salt into the wound.  You can’t say you are not part of the wound as an individual, if you are part of the collective that opened it up. 

And do the only decent and responsible thing is for the unprejudiced white I to apologize to  the black We.  Individually the white I’s need to apologize, and those who won’t need to be the exiled, the excommunicated, the eliminated from the dialogue, thrown into the solitude of not being part of the further discussion.  Labeled and treated as the real non-humans they have lost their souls into the hells of their own self-loathing.

Accept your part of the WE of white and learn to apologize whether you felt you sinned, knew you sinned, or simply sinned unintentionally.  Just admitting you are responsible when you offend is the courageous man.

I was not courageous that day in Mr. Honcho’s office.  Mr. Honcho seemed a very reasonable man, Mr. Honcho personally called me a bit later to tell me how courageous I was in diffusing the situation with Mr. Parker. And I, swelled head and all, thought I had diffused the situation with Mr. Parker.  But Mr. Parker was the courageous one, ready to stand for his dignity on all of the insults of all of the whites who had ever insulted Mr. Parker.

“I’m prejudiced because I bring my lunch?”doesn’t sound like an insult to you? Of course it was an insult, demeaning of Mr. Parker as if he had no right to feel prejudiced against me.  

Mr. Parker soon thereafter applied to sanitation, and eventually received the transfer.   In the meantime we worked in the crew together for several  more months.  He became silent.  He didn’t talk with the other black crew members any longer because they too thought I had handled the situation quite well. 

We  got an hour mandated lunch for our crew and a twenty minute paid break in our long five hour work stretch.  We were also each granted additional paid leave time of 20 days to make up for our half hour unpaid overtime we’d been working since before I joined.  Mr. Parker really glowered when the news came down and everyone threw their arms around me as if I had done it. They had all done it, including Mr. Parker, I said.

How magnanimous I was.

Twelve years later I met Mr. Parker again.  I had completed my university degree and had returned to the D.C. area.  I had gotten involved with the Jackson campaign and was knocking on doors to talk to voters.  

Mr. Parker had been a decade  or so  older than me. I was now almost 35 so I imagine he was nearing fifty.  He had developed a paunch.  He frowned when he opened the door to me and I began my spiel about Jackson.  He came out onto the step, but left his door open and listened very patiently, and then I invited him to a Jackson meeting , and he stepped back into the house and said. “NO.” 

 “Why not, Parker, (we had always just used last names) you of all, people should want to be involved in this campaign.” 

He smiled at me broadly.  I do not believe I had ever seen him smile. “That is why. I am not all people. You call me all people, but I have an identity of my own. I do not like white people.  You know I never liked you.  I never liked you.  I never liked any white people, because I am a person, I am not all, people, or a type of people.  I am a person who cannot be represented as a kind of  person.  I don’t like white people because you are a people to me who see me as a people.  I will never be a people, or a part of people that is excluded from being a person. So for me,as a person, I have excluded white people as a people who have made me a people and not a person.  I might have been able to like you as a person, except for one thing, you were a white people and  I had refused to except white persons as individuals because they had excluded me.  

“When I was younger I shoplifted with two white boys.  I went to jail for three months in place of them because the judge said people like me were more likely to commit another crime and so I had to go to jail. So after that all white people are to me and I will never be anything but white people if I am only a people and not a person to myself. I achieve that by making you the all people who are responsible for trying to make me not a person.”

And then he shut the door.