The Philosopher in the Basement

I’ve learned that another one of my friends from high school is in the Middle East. He’s not a tourist. He’s not there because he’s a venture capitalist. He’s there because his government told him to go. And he serves.

I originally intended to sit here and type some leadership stuff, but I don’t know if I’m feeling that vibe any more. I’m sensing more like “philosophical shit” is brewing inside me. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a Buddhist today.

He brought up the topic of race in America. Heavy duty. He observed some one-on-one violence this weekend while in downtown Chicago with his family. A young white man and a young black man were fighting. I guess my friend and his family stumbled upon the crowd dispersing after the first round of violence. The young white man was picking up his backpack and walking away from the altercation. As he walked away, he yelled back over his shoulder, “Have a nice day, n****r!” He took a few more steps and hollered, “N****R!” Again, “HAVE A NICE DAY, N****R!” I guess he did this a few more times. Eventually, the young black man, clearly enraged, ran off after him. My friend grabbed his young son’s arm and his wife’s hand, and he led them down the street in the opposite direction.

In America, we can only talk about race and racism in very controlled circumstance. It is almost taboo to do so in public. We can only do it occasionally. We can only do it superficially. We can only do it when it’s a news story that gives everyone the opportunity to say, “Look at how bad racism is. Good thing I’M not that way.”

If none of us are “that way,” then how come so many of us are that way? It’s not just about “The Big Two,” either…White and Black. My Buddhist friend is from Asia. He’s had his fair share of pointless, hateful, racism sludge slung his way. All because…well, there’s no hiding that he’s Asian.

But there’s hiding for me. That is an odd feeling…to know that I can effectively skirt the race issue, if I wanted to. I was at a university in Florida the year some police officers beat a young Cuban boy to death. They kicked him in the face to hard and so many times there were shoe prints in his skin. I was at another University the day the verdicts in the Rodney King police trials came in and stirred up riots across the country in 1992. There were so many students protesting in the streets that the police took two steps back and just prayed. All the white kids stayed in the dorms, in their apartments, and in their frat and sorority houses.

Me? I went out into the street.

I got a lot of looks that night. See, I wasn’t of the appropriate ethnicity. At the time, I remember feeling disgust and outrage. I remembered how that beating in Florida made the Hispanic community there feel. I remembered how some local kids thought I’d make a good target since I wore a small leather flag around my neck that advertised my parent’s country of origin. So, in my brain, I felt that a part of me understood the anger they were feeling.

That night, I learned that empathy and brotherhood are two very different things.

I was with two friends. Eventually, standing out like sore thumbs got us noticed by the wrong group of guys. They walked up to us and said, “Hey! MOTHERF****RS! What do you think about THAT shit?” My friends froze. Speechless. Me…I just opened my mouth and hoped that what I felt would strike a chord. I talked about growing up Gringo in Mexico; about all the applications for which I never received callbacks when I looked for jobs; about the beating in Florida…I said some other stuff, but I was pretty scared myself. Whatever I said…well, they just looked at me. One of them said, “RIGHT ON!” And they kept going. My friends and I slipped off the main drag and all but ran back home. We didn’t say much else that night. We probably had a few beers and retired to our rooms. Something like that.

Racial tension is always just below the surface in America. Personal experience and simply paying attention to the world tells me that it’s not just here. It’s all over. And it just doesn’t make sense to me. If, one-on-one, everyone just wants to live their lives in peace, then why do we do the things we do? We either lie when we are facing each other or we lose our minds when we are in groups. Either way, I just don’t understand why. Pretty soon, I’ll have to explain it to two little boys. I guess I need to work with my wife and formulate a response. That’s a lot of responsibility. It’s one message we need to get right.

That’s a lot to ask from a philosopher in the basement.