Betty said, “you have no idea what it’s like.” Then, “you don’t know what it’s like being a black woman.” Then, “you don’t know what it’s like being a black lesbian.” She got a little louder with each repetition.
I had taken Betty and her wife, Terry, out to dinner to say thanks for a favor they did for us. They showed me a new Mexican restaurant and it was ok, other than the grandé margarita was not as good as the ones served at my regular place. We hadn’t spent much time together, but I took to them right away when we first met. Terry was an IT consultant and Betty ran a catering kitchen. I love meeting new people who are not like me.
After ordering my first margarita, I mentioned I had come across Zora Neale Hurston’s memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, and how her story reminded me of what I knew of Terry who also grew up on a farm in South Carolina. They heard of Hurston but not about her life. I suppose that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Why would black girls want to know the story of a poor black girl, even if she went on to study at Columbia University with Franz Boas, publish stories and books, and live a high life in Harlem and Hollywood before dying poor in a Florida old folks’ home. Maybe only white folk care about such stories, I don’t know.
I did care and later found a collection of her stories called, You Don’t Know Us Negroes. If I’d found it sooner, it might have helped me avoid the catastrophe that overcame this Mexican dinner. Hurston’s title story reminded me of a book I found at my high school library called Black Like Me. It was the memoir of a white man who put shoe polish on his skin and went South to see how white people treated him, sometime in the 1950’s, I think. It’s not a happy story as I recall now, but it did tell me early on that I had little to no idea what it was like to grow up as anything other than a white kid. Betty was on to something.
Except that I did know about it, and sometimes even white kids were subjected to prejudice.
The evening went off the rails when Terry asked me what I thought about the reversal of the Roe abortion case. Being who I am, I speak plainly and bluntly and often oblivious to the likely impact of my words on those who hear me, I said there was no Constitutional right to abortion and Roe was long overdue to be reversed. Terry started to argue with me and quickly decided I was just an irredeemably stupid fucking idiot and slammed her hand on the table and walked out to her car, as pissed-off as a woman can get. And I was the only one drinking that night.
When Betty started getting on me about what I didn’t know, Terry came back to our table to let us (I hoped) know she had the car outside. We kinda kissed and made up on the way home. Terry was going off on Trump for making fun of fat people, which I had to admit was pretty despicable.
When I was a kid, my Dad was a Marine officer and we moved several times. We followed him to a duty station at the US Navy base in Yokosuka, Japan in the late 1950’s where he was the Executive Officer of the Military Police Marine detachment in charge of the Brig. That’s where they keep prisoners. I was four years old, and we lived on base in a Quonset hut.
My parents enrolled me in a nursery school outside the base gates and in the mornings our maid named Michiko took me through the gate to the school and then retrieved me and brought me home when school was out. I am still amazed we could afford a maid as I suspect my dad’s pay was all of $150 a month. We also had a maid when we lived in Turkey later on, and it occurs to me some aspect of privilege was in play.
I wore a school uniform with a little hat. I was the only white kid in the class of Japanese kids, and my enduring memory is one of loneliness. Mom said I was a fluent speaker when we left, but all I recall now is konnichiwa, which means hello or good day, and arigato, which means thank you.
One day, school let out early and Michiko wasn’t there to take me home, so I found my way back to the gate by myself. But the MP gate guards wouldn’t let me pass. It was raining and I’m guessing that with my raincoat over a school uniform they didn’t see a little American boy and, instead, a Japanese school kid who wasn’t going to just saunter onto the American Navy base.
Refused entry, I hung onto the chain link fence in the pouring rain and cried. And I cried while the rainwater ran into my boots soaking my socks. After a while one of the guards came out and asked me my name, and when he figured out that I was the son of his commanding officer I suddenly became a very important person. Ah-so, Bond-san! There’s that privilege thing again. This story had a happy ending and I’ve come to refer to it as my refugee experience.
Many years later I met real refugees and was happy to help one gain entry to the United States.
I was close to retirement after practicing law for over 40 years and responded to the call from the Northwest Immigration Rights Project for volunteers to help with the massive flow of foreign-born men and women entering the US. I thought I might be assigned to represent Mexican or other Latino immigrants; instead, I met a gypsy from Romania and an English-speaking college grad and web designer from Cameroon, I’ll call him Prince.
To be granted asylum the applicant must show a credible fear of persecution on account of race, ethnicity, gender or political belief. The right to asylum is granted by international treaty and federal law. If the person qualifies, he or she cannot be denied entry and must be granted asylum. If they passed the initial screening at the entry point by stating what was thought to be a credible claim of persecution, they would be sent to processing centers around the country, including one in Tacoma, Washington. Before the flood of millions began to come across the Southern border in early 2021, the administrative system of courts was able to deal with the claims for asylum reasonably promptly.
The Roma, also known as gypsies, are treated poorly throughout Eastern Europe and my gypsy client told tales of abuse and had physical scars from fights and stabbings he said were caused by people who hated gypsies. US State Department reports corroborated the persecution of Roma at work, in school, sports events and simply walking down the street. But because he presented at the border with no documentation and told several different stories along the way about how he lost his documents, the judge declared his claim was not credible and his petition for asylum was denied.
Prince had better luck. His offense was to participate in a protest against the French speaking government. It’s a long and complex story emanating in part, I believe, from the division of the country into English and French speakers after Germany was deprived of its colony following WWI. When oil was later discovered in the English-speaking region, the French speaking side wanted it, along with their civil and political rights and independent parliament, and civil unrest erupted.
After a protest Prince was arrested and tortured by the police in Cameroon, who wanted to know the names of his compatriots. When he and several others were taken out to be shot, he fled into the forest. He found his way onto a flight to Ecuador where you don’t need a visa to enter the country. From there with the help of smugglers he made his way north across Central America and Mexico to the US border station at San Ysidro, California where he sought political asylum. Having stated a prima facie case for asylum, the government sent him to its detention center in Tacoma for a hearing with an immigration judge, and that is where we met. I can imagine Don Cheadle playing the part of Prince in a film about the journey.
Prince’s family mailed me a thick envelope of records, including an ID card, school records, and local English language newspapers with reports and photographs of the destruction of the village where he had lived. We had no problem proving Prince’s claim of persecution for political beliefs. After several postponements of the hearing with the immigration judge, when the hearing began the judge told me that the less I said the better it would go. After trying cases for over 40 years, I’ve learned to read the judge and catch a hint about what he was planning to do. Unfortunately, that intuition was absent during my outing with Betty and Terry.
The judge found Prince’s claim to be credible and granted his petition for political asylum. I turned to Prince and said, welcome to America, and that was one of the more rewarding things I’ve ever done.
I’m not sure what all that has to do with Betty and Terry. I guess Joe South had it right when he sang, Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes, Yeah, before you abuse, criticize and accuse, walk a mile in my shoes, because brother, there but for the grace of God go you and I.
Well done Mike!