You wake to the staccato cacophony of an epic hailstorm. Crazy golf balls of ice are pelting your roof, and occasionally shattering the single pane windows of your 1926 house. As you later learn, they are also slaying exotic birds at the nearby zoo. Your yard and driveway are left invisible under a blanket of ice balls. Your daughter is unnerved. “Daddy, are we safe?”
“Yes sweetheart, of course we-” CRASH! “- get away from the windows!”
Surely school is cancelled in the face of this apocalypse? You check for notifications. Nothing. Apparently, your neighborhood is the only one being destroyed by Snow Miser.
Mercifully, the storm lets up right before it’s time to leave for school. You drive just a couple blocks before you’re in another world – one in which the roads are clear, and the trees haven’t been stripped of their leaves, limbs and dignity.
As the morning continues, roofers and other contractors descend on your block, handing out cards and assessing damage for your neighbors. While walking the dog, you are addressed by at least three different Larry The Cable Guys in pickup trucks looking to drum up business.
You return to your house at the end of the walk. There’s a pickup parked in front, and a twenty-something African American in the passenger seat rolls down the window to ask you what kind of dog you have. You tell him, and smile, and turn to walk across the yard toward your house. He says “That your house? I like it man. Are they hiring for . . . whatever you do?”
You laugh, and tell him you’re a lawyer – a profession best avoided by the non-loathsome
“You a lawyer?! Can I have your number?”
“Oh, I don’t do -” you start to say, but then stammer in horror at what almost came out of your mouth. Because you almost said “criminal law.” What?!? What the Hell is wrong with, you unconsciously racist bastard! A young black man wants to speak with a lawyer and you immediately assume it’s because of criminal charges?? Why don’t you just wear a white hood, ya dirty Klansman?
You’re reeling from the realization of your own stupid prejudice – a prejudice you can’t tolerate in others – but try to salvage your answer. “I don’t do – I’m not in private practice anymore. I’m a corporate lawyer. I just have one client.”
He’s grabbing a pen. “Well can I have your number anyway? You know, just in case I have questions.”
You don’t want to give this guy your number. But you also don’t want to be shitty to him. And you feel guilty about your thought crime. And the fact that you’re Whitey Whiterton from Easy Street. Would it kill you to answer the guy’s question if in the future he ever does have an issue?
You approach his truck. He’s got a spiral notebook in hand, and you give him your name and number. His partner has returned, and says indignantly “What the Hell? You writing in my LYRICS book?!”
“His LYRICS book?” you joke. “That ain’t right man. Where’s the respect?” As you speak, you become aware that the cadence and sound of your voice has unintentionally changed. It’s like you’re trying to sound black. Except you aren’t trying – it’s automatic. Like when you speak broken English to the maid, or use a French accent to your international colleagues. My God, man – you’re a train wreck on top of another, more gruesome train wreck.
They laugh at your jest and you start to walk away. You hear the first guy say “he a lawyer”.
His partner says “A lawyer? Hey, you a lawyer?!”
“Yes.”
“You do custody?”
“Naw. I’m a corporate lawyer.”
“Corporate lawyer?” he pauses, thinking. “Yeah, I’ma need that when I get rich.” He holds up his lyrics book. “You gonna be my personal corporate lawyer.”
“Uh . . . sure man. That-that’d be cool.”
You turn, walk up to your giant house, and step inside. You reflect on how even the most conscientious and supposedly “enlightened” white dudes are still just white dudes, shaped by their white dude experiences. And many – even ones like you who abhor racism, and have black friends, and voted for Obama twice – even they may still suffer from latent prejudices they don’t fully recognize.
You kick off your shoes as the words of your favorite Ice Cube song return unbidden to your mind:
“. . . Callin me an African American,
Like everything is fair again.
Shit, Devil, you got to get the shit right,
I’m black, blacker than a trillion midnights.”
You empty your pockets of the business cards you were handed, and regret you didn’t ask the black guys for theirs. Or even their names.
Maybe they’ll call with a legal question.
You hope they do.