A Roll of the Dice

I want to write about the lazy, hazy days of late summer. About fingers stained purple from blackberry picking and marshmallows roasted over bonfires at Golden Gardens. I want to write about Queen Anne and Magnolia neighbors enjoying the bounty of their gardens. About kids beginning to think back-to-school thoughts with a mixture of dread and anticipation.

But I can’t stop thinking about a town in Missouri that is in deep despair. And about the increasingly thin veneer between ease and unrest that is cracking, allowing the pervasive racism that exists in our country to seep through, infiltrating our thoughts, our conversations and our actions. Instead of preparing to start college in the fall, a young man in Ferguson, Missouri has been shot dead and his family and neighbors are suffering in ways we cannot fully comprehend.   

Because the media exposes us to events that might otherwise remain local, we can’t help but be cognizant of the growing pattern of race-based crimes. We know about the July killing of Eric Garner, an innocent Staten Island man, when police used an illegal chokehold, depriving his children of their father. And about Renisha McBride, a Detroit girl shot in the face last November by a man from whom she sought help following a car crash. Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012. John Williams in Seattle in 2010. And now, Michael Brown in Missouri and Ezell Ford in Los Angeles. And so many more… The victims: People of color. The killers: White.

It is much easier to relate to and mourn the deaths of Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall. But think for a minute. What if Eric Garner was your father or your husband? What if Renisha or Trayvon or Michael or Ezell were your children?  Hard to imagine, right? Because these kinds of things don’t happen in our neighborhood.

Or, on some level, do they?

My husband and I are completing a summer of boat work, the final piece of which is painting and repairing the hull at a boatyard behind Fred Meyer in Ballard. Six jack stands incredibly steady the massive vessel on its keel while we sand, prime, repair, epoxy and paint, doing the work ourselves to save on cost. It’s been a daily  marathon of grueling work, which leaves us covered in dust, paint, and boat-yard filth.

Last week, I broke from painting and strolled over to Fred Meyer. Walking through the store, stopping first to get my glasses repaired at the optical shop and then moving on to order grilled Panini sandwiches in the deli, grab some ice for the cooler, and, finally make a quick trip to the ladies’ room, I noticed that people were giving me odd looks. A woman I nearly collided with as she exited the ladies’ room, formed a startled, silent “Oh!” with her mouth, her eyes wide open.

Looking in the mirror I saw what she had seen. Staring back at me was my boatyard self: a bandana topped by a backwards baseball cap, an oversized, ripped, paint-splattered t-shirt, baggy capris and expensive hiking shoes wrapped in duct tape to protect them from paint and solvents. No make up on my sweaty face.

I laughed as I finally understood the looks. But my laughter turned to sudden sorrow as it dawned on me that a growing number of people in our society deal with such reactions every day. People for whom the increasing economic divide is proving disastrous. People who are being marginalized through no fault of their own.

And then I thought about Michael Brown. Skin color is a no fault condition. How we are born is an inarguable roll of the dice. I cannot know how it feels to be black, or brown, or poor, just because some woman looked at me cross-eyed in Fred Meyer. But it gave me pause…

People are being killed because of the color of their skin. Period. There is no justification for it. 22-year-old John Warner, a black man, was killed earlier this month in an Ohio Wal-Mart for holding a bb gun in his hand. Shot dead right there in the toy aisle. His last words were, “It’s not real!” Would the same thing have happened if he were white? I would bet money against it. Lots of money. At least enough money to hire someone to finish working on our boat.

Skin color may be a roll of the dice but how we treat people based on their appearance is our choice. No matter what we learn about Michael Brown in the days to come, ask yourself, was death the penalty? Was being shot in the street in cold blood what he deserved? The authorities spin stories to make victims out to be drug users, shoplifters, and whatever else they can dig up and corroborate. Even if the stories are true, is the punishment for these alleged crimes death? Michael Brown’s death, as the other racially motivated deaths, was a modern-day lynching. An execution without a trial.

How do we move forward from this? Hopefully reminders such as the one I had at Fred Meyer last week can teach us compassion for people we see pushing shopping carts down the sidewalk, or a person of color in the toy aisle of a store.

Because if the dice had been rolled differently, it could just as easily be you. Or me. Or your children. Or mine.

UNDER THE VEIL

Close your eyes and picture this:  Woman in Burka. 

What do you see?  Dark, flowing fabric?  Face visible?  Just eyes?   Is she walking through a barren, dusty, rock-strewn landscape? Or seated in her home, comfortable but isolated, saved only for her husband’s eyes. 

Or… is she walking down the halls of a hospital in Seattle, a refugee seeking medical care, cut off not only from her own people but also the people amongst whom she now lives.

I work at UW Medical Center, a hospital that serves a virtual United Nations of patients. Dealing with people from all over the world in life and death situations allows me to regularly encounter the heart of our shared humanity.  Perceived differences between people can come crashing down in one familiar, empathetic moment of connection.  In this hospital setting, I am constantly reminded of how alike we are despite language, tradition, culture and the garments with which we choose to cover our bodies.

Last week, heading to the espresso bar for my morning coffee, a man looking lost met my eyes and asked, “Do you work here?”  I postponed my coffee run to help him.  Navigating our way through the maze of hallways, I learned that he was Ethiopian and needed medical documents for immigration.  In my mind I switched places with him, trying to accomplish a similar task in Ethiopia.  I couldn’t wrap my brain around it, but it made me glad to be helping him.  We parted with a smile and a handshake.

Back at the espresso bar, two women I see every day greeted me.  Members of our housekeeping staff, also Ethiopians, they are constant presences to those of us who work in my area.  We chat about our lives and our families while waiting for our coffee.  One of them mentioned that it was her birthday and we ended up in a triple grande hug.  

Finally, latte in hand, I headed down the hall to my office.  A pedestrian traffic jam in the main hallway caused me to walk next to a burka-clad woman, our shoulders practically touching. I ignored my usual impulse to just walk by,  (a response to the burka’s apparent  message to keep distance between us?), and asked, “How are you today?” She looked surprised and responded, “Fine thank you, how are you?” in perfect English.  After learning that I was an employee, she said that she thought this was the best hospital in the world.

“I was near death,” she explained.  “I was in this hospital for a long time and they saved my life and showed me that life was worth living.”  I asked what unit she had been on.  The answer surprised me.  It was the in-patient psychiatric unit.  Then I learned where she is from.

She is Somalian. 

I was struck as I thought about it afterwards at how little I know, really, about Somalia. I know the basics.  I know it’s bad over there. But I have not taken it to the next level. I felt embarrassed when I admitted to myself that I didn’t even know where Somalia is in Africa. Or Ethiopia, the country of work-mates and where my daughter’s best friend is in the Peace Corps. 

I began obsessively studying a map of Africa; learning the geographical relationships between countries and places on this vast continent.  I felt ashamed at my ignorance but grateful for this encounter that propelled me on a mission to step outside my little world.

I googled madly.  “Somali Women;” “Somali Women’s Plight;” “Somali Civil War.” This is a glimpse of what I learned.

Somali women in refugee camps (for two decades now) have fled their homes and their lives, grieve dead husbands and children and parents and siblings, are starving, forced to endure poor hygiene and sanitation, subjected to sexual violence including being raped and sexually mutilated in front of their children (their attackers given absolute impunity as the powers that be consider rape a weapon of war).  They suffer trauma beyond our comprehension.  Grief and resignation is what one reporter described as the permanent look on the faces of these women. 

What had this woman standing next to me in the hall been through?  What had landed her in the hospital after finally escaping this horror, with no desire to continue living?

Under that burka was a woman who had likely loved, borne children, enjoyed the warm sun and the flowers and the sweet smells of salt air and spring.  A woman who, in another time and place, might have been a friend or a sister.

But that’s just it.  She IS a sister. And a daughter.  And a mother.   The sooner we start looking at our world, at each other, that way, the better we all will be. We are so much stronger when we work together and try to understand each other than we are when we fight or try to build ourselves up by putting each other down.  

A friend of mine emailed recently recommending a documentary called, I Am.  “The film’s message is that the human race is meant to be cooperative, not competitive, and if we don’t start working together – helping each other – no matter race, creed, country – we will go extinct.”

When we focus on our differences we become participants in the funneling of hatred and fear and blame towards people, symbols and places. We become pawns in a larger, very dangerous game.  Fuel for the fire.  Instead, we have to turn our thinking around from an “us and them” mentality.  A “we win – you lose” philosophy. 

Naïve?  Maybe.  An original thought?  No.   A little “kumbaya?” Perhaps. 

But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

We are all going to win. 

Or we are all going to lose.

It’s pretty much that simple.  And, unfortunately, that complex.