Living in coronavirusworld 75: One step

6/13

Window at Paint and Pour

I haven’t  done a road  race for many years. I only began walking again regularly in March. But I got an invite for “Run Across America,” a “virtual” 5k to benefit “Feeding America.” It says you can “run, walk or roll,”  So I will walk, And the distance from my pace in Harlem to Pier 1, near where I’ll be meeting my family,  is exactly 3.1 miles…5K.   As I take off, I notice hills in a way I haven’t before. Feel the shortness of breath and think about the years. As I think of the challenge of 3.1 miles, I remember how in my running days, that was my short run.  And as I hit the Hudson River trail, I remember years of runs down this path. I remember that I actually ran 10 marathons in my days. And like at the beginning, it’s step by  step. I haven’t been down along the river in years.  So I walk through years of Little League baseball games and soccer games and nights at the Boat Basin when you could hang out there with a cold drink and watch the sun set over the bobbing of masts on the Hudson. There’s only one or two big ships parked in the River waiting to head south to the harbor and then out to sea. 

The path is filled with runners and bikers, families. About 50/50 on masks and social distancing. People laying out for tans. Picnicikng. The Boat Basin seems about half full, maybe only permanent boats, no in and out weekend traffic in this pandemic. The Pier 1 Cafe is filled with people getting a drink or snack.  Wear a mask. Stay 6 feet apart…the line snakes. Our family is meeting further south, I pass the ruin of the 69th street transfer bridge, one used to transfer railway cars to floats across the river to Weehawken, New Jersey.   Their birthdays were missed. We are here to celebrate  their mom’s.

the Transfer Bridge ruins

Finally I find my family on a blanket in the shade. It is the first time I have seen my boys in three months.

The Boat Basin

Both boys, 27 and 30, have been going to the demonstrations in Brooklyn. The younger one every night. Most of our conversation is taken up with the current uprising. Questions. How do we talk to black colleagues? What do we say? How do we ask how they are doing/feeling without sounding condescending or not sensitive? What do you do when your work administration has been strangely silent, even when significant employees are African -American?  Or when you feel they have been tone deaf or insensitive? I talk about the necessity of making complaints objectively, not assuming motive or intention. But describing the personal effect of actions and non-actions. And the golden rule of no response until  the listener has repeated back what they’ve heard and you agree that they heard the message. 

It gets deeper when we try to figure out what we are supposed to do. Yes…it’s good that we show up. Be present. Put our bodies between black protestors and police. But there’s an inherent understanding that this goes beyond cultural sensitivity training.  This is beyond removing the proverbial “bad apples.” There is the beginning of understanding that  on a broad scale something systemic is terribly wrong. That the police are playing a role of domination and control in a system that is inherently exploitative and has been since the beginning. That endemic to the system is a structure of white privilege and domination and that issues related to the police can only be addressed in relation to that system of privilege and domination. Current discussions about community based police and citizen review and even defunding the police in order to fund restorative social programs are only the first  steps.  That ultimately what is required is the dismantling, the deconstruction of the architecture of oppression. The active deconstruction of white privilege. That is a tall order.

And it is an order that requires white people taking responsibility and accountability. And doing the work of figuring out what we are supposed to do. We are going to have to have uncomfortable conversations with people we love. One wonders how to invite family members into that conversation. He has already talked with former fraternity  brothers about their experiences during their college years, things  they were not  even aware of. But what of  family? Cousins? Aunts and uncles? His mom is aware of commitments and serious investments some have made over the years, often quietly. We can’t always assume what others may feel, think or do. And there is absolutely no room for  condescension. Or the sense that any one of us is further along.

We talk about what it was in our family experience that enabled our boys to have the perspectives they do. They both remember how the “Peace Olympics” at their old Jewish lefty summer camp, including living in cabins named for Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney and the Robeson cultural hall or the Clemente sports center, the research they did on their teams’s issue, all come  back to mind in the midst of demonstrations.  Teach your children well. It makes a difference.

A little rain starts to fall.  We stand under the highway until  the sun comes out again.  My road back, my 5K today began with one step. That’s where we are. One step. Time to take it.