do you mean?â he said. âWhat has that got to do with anything?â
âIt means that I understand everything about you,â I said. âI know where youâre coming from and what youâre 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 donât know a thing about me. You donât know who I am. You donât have an inkling what it feels like to be black. And whatâs more, you donât even try. You donât even care.â
He was stunned. He didnât know what to say. He stared for a second, then stammered, and then he was quiet.
âI care,â he said. âWhat makes you think I donât care?â
âBecause if you and all the people who claimed to care really cared,â I said, âthings wouldnât be as bad as they still are. Africa is not the only place with inhuman poverty and injustice.â
He wanted to talk to me about New York City.
âThe greatest city in the world,â he called it. âItâs got everything, rich and poor, black and white, side by side. People of all races live together and they get along fine. Itâs truly a melting pot.â
âWhat New York City are you talking about?â I shouted. âThereâs a hundred thousand homeless people living on the streets there. And blacks and whites and Koreans and Jews killing each other every day. Donât you read the papers? You canât be this naive.â
âI spend a lot of time in New York,â he said. âI never have a problem.â
âYou think that because you canât see the problems the problems donât exist,â I said. âI donât know what part of New York youâve been hanging around, but come with me tomorrow. Iâll show you a New York youâve never seen before. Iâll show you places where you wonât even want to get out of your car. Even in daytime. Iâll show you places where the poverty and suffering will make you sick.â
He stammered, didnât know what to say.
âIâm almost thirty-five years old,â I said. âI 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, Iâve got a better chance of being dead or at best on drugs or in jail than I have of seeing my next birthday.â
Then the host joined in. He offered that things might not be as bad as they seemed. He said, âCertainly black people are a lot better off than they were in the past.â 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.
âBecause one black man made a lot of money,â I said, âyou think things have gotten so much better? Whatâs wrong with you people? Are you so blind that you canât see anything?â Now they were all listening to me.
Climb inside my head, I told them. Climb in and see what itâs like to be black. See what itâs like to always wonder if what happens to you is happening because of your color. See what itâs 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.
âIâll tell you one thing,â I said. âIf I were poor and destitute Iâd go where the money is, Iâd stick up your neighborhood. Iâd break into your house. But the way justice works in this country, it doesnât 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
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