In my story, I experience this body-shaking, sweat=producing anxiety whenever I am confronoted by authority. When a police car behind me engages a siren or bright lights as I am driving, I immediately worry that he wiill stop me and I plan what I am going to say.
One day, as I was driving my then new hybrid car, I was trying to stay within the speed limit that would allow the car to remain in electric drive mode. I heard a siren behind me, and through a megaphone, the policeman ordered me to "Pull over!"
I panicked. "What did I do wrong? I wasn't speeding, for sure, but I wasn't paying good attention either. Was there a stop sign I missed?
I opened the driver's side window.
"License and registration, please."
Ok, but I need to reach into the glove compartment to get the registration,I mumbled. but having short arms, ,I couldn't reach to open the glove box from behind the wheel.
"I need to exit the vehicle in order to retrieve the registration," I said formally. The police officer shrugged, but moved away from the door. When I got out, I was even more afraid. This man was huge. I had heard a story of a police officer trading a ticket for sexual favors and I thought to ask him to meet me at the police station, but I was too scared and I walked around the car to get the paper he needed. Finally, I was brave enough to ask, "What did I do wrong?"
"The frame on your license plate is obscuring the number. Your license plate says you drive a 1989 Oldsmobile."
I hadn't thought about that story since 2012, when the car was new.
Until now.
I have recently returned from the Montgomery Alabama Lynching Museum where I read all the reasons a person of color, including women and children, as recently as the 1960's were lynched.
And considering the number of black men being killed every day as they drive their cars, it continues today.
All four of my grandparents were born in the 1880's, in Galicia, a part now of Poland, which had been ruled by Russia and Germany before the end of the First World War. During that time, there were many violent attacks on Jewish people, plus rules on where they could live and how they could earn money. They were not allowed to own property.
One grandfather left in 1906 for Germany, partly due to a violent outrage against the Jews because a Christian girl was killed and the Jews were blamed. He sent for his sweetheart whom he married in 1910.
He fought in the First World War from 1914-1918 on the side of Austro-Hungary because that's where his citizenship was. He was awarded an Iron Cross.
In 1938 he and his wife had to board a cattle car which took them from their home with just one suitcase each, and dumped them on the Polish border. They tried to walk out of Poland to Romania but were stopped and jailed, accused of smuggling. They were freed in late September 1939 when the Russians invaded Poland. They spent the next four years walking and hiding in Ukraine, Russia and finally arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan where they spent the rest of the war.
My other grandfather tried to flee the Nazis also by walking, but he walked east to Austria, then south to Croatia, which at that time was a neutral part of Yugoslavia. He was captured in Zagreb and shot in Jasenovac concentration camp in November 1941
The survivors carried the scars of trauma ever since. I felt I really understood the fears Black parents and grandparents have for their children, living in a hostile environment all their lives. When one woman claimed, "I am color=blind. I don't see color. I treated all of my schoolchildren the same," I overheard a woman of color whisper, "Yes, she's white. She doesn't have to see color every day."
Anti Semitism hasn't ended since the war and it most likely never will. But aside from mass murderers and terrorists who want to use the Jews to further their own political agendas, we are safe in the United States. All people of color are not.
I have worked among people of color all my life. I was a volunteer teacher for migrant children in New Jersey when the children were here as their parents harvested tomatoes and other foods. I taught first grade in an inner city school in Newark, New Jersey. I supervised the social workers who counseled the children at a Coney Island day care center. I ran a mother-toddler group in the center. I took playground duty, making friends with the children who were there for a few years until first grade. But I have no friends of color. I do not know as much about any person of color as I have revealed here today. The opportunity for that kind of friendship has not presented itself for me so far. I hope that will change. As W.E.B.Dubois said "Get to know one person so you ca see they suffer like you, they laugh like you, they breathe like you and you cannot hate someone you know."
