Taste the Rainbow

I was mugged in the fall of 2005, on a walk near my neighborhood in Rochester NY, around midnight.  I was alone; two kids (16 yo) came up to me.  One of them had a metal pipe and whacked me in the back of the neck.  About an inch higher and he’d have cracked my skull open.

Lucky for me there was an off-duty security guard/former cop watching.  He came to my rescue.  The irony to me was that they’d even pick me: I had $7 on me at the time; I was in the midst of a post-college theatre job which provided a place to live and paid me $25 / week.  Not exactly dressed for success.

For months afterwards my whole body clenched any time I was alone and saw a black kid in a hoodie.  I had serious conversations with myself and friends: had this incident made me a racist?  Had my insides been rewired so that anytime I saw a black kid at night I’d be scared? 

I was not ok with this idea, for moral and practical reasons.  But for a long time that was the reaction my body had.

Then one night, walking alone, my heart clenched again.  Only this time it was a white dude in a hoodie.  Turns out I was just scared of dudes in hoodies.  At night.

Obviously still not ideal.  But I was relieved that I was only scared of dudes in hoodies, instead of black dudes in hoodies.  Now hoodies don’t even scare me.  Onesies, sure, but…

Listen, I know some brown dudes flew into the World Trade Center.  It’s understandable that some of us have an uncontrollable physical reaction of fear; that’s how our bodies are wired.  That doesn’t make every brown dude guilty.  And it doesn’t mean any time shit like Copley Square goes down that it was a brown dude. 

Waco, OK City, Atlanta, Newtown, Columbine, Aurora: MIDDLE CLASS WHITE DUDES. 

That’s me.  And probably a lot of you reading this.

There are so many wonderful people in the world of all colors, and there are just a few dickheads.  We’re at a time in history when those dickheads have a lot of power and can incite a lot of fear.  Don’t give them more power by creating your own fear and turning against the good folks.

Have we learned nothing from skittles?  Taste the rainbow.