OJ, Katrina and daNile

It’s a river in Africa but as a Negro, my life too depends on “de-Nile.” Like most middle-class black people, I play on myself whatever mind tricks are necessary to not be angry about racism in America.

Most of the time, denying that race matters in America, is easy. On any screen of any size, movie, computer or iPod, I can find happy, included Negroes, entertainers, athletes, surgeons even, exemplifying the best of our national smorgasbord. That’s what I want to see and believe. And because I’m a middle class American, it’s what I can see and believe… most of the time.

Then comes something like the OJ trial and my tissue of racial denial is blown away like thin flesh before a bomb. Suddenly the on every channel the skin color of the jury is topic “A.” Time magazine is darkening the picture of OJ on its cover apparently to make him seem more menacing and endless talk of Mark Fuhrman, an LAPD detective, turns “the ‘n’ word” into a national chant. And half my white friends want me to agree that Johnny Cochran’s playing “the race card” is bad for the country which make me angry and defensive at being somebody’s “touchstone” for black freaking culture!

But then I tell myself the hysteria is not about race but celebrity… and beauty… and Hollywood. I refused to believe that in 1995 it is still controversial to marry “outside your race...” largely because I’d done it and I wanted to think my own life OK.

Then the trial ends. Time passes. I exhale. The river denial again flows, easy and comforting. In my community I am not a skin color but an individual, liked, respected. Except of course if I try to hail a cab or walk into a fancy store. But I’m not dwelling on that because I mostly drive or ride my bike. And I don’t go into those stores anymore.

Then comes the New Orleans flood and black people are “looting” and whites are “finding food” and all those old folks at the convention center who look like my relatives were abandoned and the world saw it. But the white guy in my health club says, “maybe the president didn’t order a rescue because he just didn’t believe what he saw on TV, you know how the media lie.” And the former US secretary of education says if we just abort all black babies the crime rate will drop! And my rage and frustration at injustice and arrogance and denial and denial… that’s right de-nial is my destination, because it has to be.

I clutch denial to my heart because white people are like the Republic of China. If they scare you, if they break your heart, even if they hurt you, you still have to get along with them. You can’t stay mad at them because they are too big and too powerful.

As I was a month after the OJ trial, I am already over my rage at the New Orleans flood. I’m down to simmering resentment and by next week I expect mere annoyance.

By Kwanzaa I’ll be a happy camper; my spirit having joined my African ancestors lazily drifting on de-Nile.