South of Haunted Dreams by Eddy L. Harris

do you mean?” he said. “What has that got to do with anything?”
    â€œIt means that I understand everything about you,” I said. “I know where you’re coming from and what you’re thinking. I can get inside your head because in so many ways I am like you. I have your same twisted dreams and aspirations. I know what you want and I know what you feel because this culture has taught me to think like you. But you don’t know a thing about me. You don’t know who I am. You don’t have an inkling what it feels like to be black. And what’s more, you don’t even try. You don’t even care.”
    He was stunned. He didn’t know what to say. He stared for a second, then stammered, and then he was quiet.
    â€œI care,” he said. “What makes you think I don’t care?”
    â€œBecause if you and all the people who claimed to care really cared,” I said, “things wouldn’t be as bad as they still are. Africa is not the only place with inhuman poverty and injustice.”
    He wanted to talk to me about New York City.
    â€œThe greatest city in the world,” he called it. “It’s got everything, rich and poor, black and white, side by side. People of all races live together and they get along fine. It’s truly a melting pot.”
    â€œWhat New York City are you talking about?” I shouted. “There’s a hundred thousand homeless people living on the streets there. And blacks and whites and Koreans and Jews killing each other every day. Don’t you read the papers? You can’t be this naive.”
    â€œI spend a lot of time in New York,” he said. “I never have a problem.”
    â€œYou think that because you can’t see the problems the problems don’t exist,” I said. “I don’t know what part of New York you’ve been hanging around, but come with me tomorrow. I’ll show you a New York you’ve never seen before. I’ll show you places where you won’t even want to get out of your car. Even in daytime. I’ll show you places where the poverty and suffering will make you sick.”
    He stammered, didn’t know what to say.
    â€œI’m almost thirty-five years old,” I said. “I have almost surpassed my life expectancy. According to the statistics, because I am black and because I am a man and because I live in a city, I’ve got a better chance of being dead or at best on drugs or in jail than I have of seeing my next birthday.”
    Then the host joined in. He offered that things might not be as bad as they seemed. He said, “Certainly black people are a lot better off than they were in the past.” Bill Cosby, he pointed out, made forty million dollars last year.
    I looked at him like he was crazy. Then I lost the other half of my mind.
    â€œBecause one black man made a lot of money,” I said, “you think things have gotten so much better? What’s wrong with you people? Are you so blind that you can’t see anything?” Now they were all listening to me.
    Climb inside my head, I told them. Climb in and see what it’s like to be black. See what it’s like to always wonder if what happens to you is happening because of your color. See what it’s like to constantly be under suspicion, to always be seen as criminal or deficient. Can you possibly know what that feels like? And if a man as fortunate as I can feel this way, can you imagine how the less fortunate must feel?
    The system is stacked, I told them.
    â€œI’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “If I were poor and destitute I’d go where the money is, I’d stick up your neighborhood. I’d break into your house. But the way justice works in this country, it doesn’t pay to break into your house. Listen, if a black man kills another black man, he gets a light sentence; if he kills a white man, he gets life in prison at least, the