How Can They Not See It?

The last time I was in New York was October of 2016. We were geared up for the election, and excited about the prospect of having an experienced, highly qualified woman as our nation’s first female president, but things were getting ugly. In the metropolitan area of New York, Trump was already well known as the corrupt, incompetent, malignant narcissist that he is, but perhaps there were Apprentice-watchers who imagined him as a shrewd and decisive businessman who would take charge and solve all their problems, as if tossing a grenade into the Ship of State were a solution.

The tone of the campaign was ominous and disturbing, freighted with lies, insults, and sordid details that only seemed to garner attention and boost ratings, reality TV style. Trump was devoid of knowledge, statesmanship, or any of the most minimal requirements for the job, and his vision was decidedly autocratic. He was mean and petty and frankly repulsive, and the very idea of him in the White House felt so dissonant, I could not imagine that he would carry any significant support among voters. How wrong I was.

Anyway, that was the context as we wandered the streets of what had long ago been my hometown. We stopped at my childhood address, and there was Scottie, a constant in a neighborhood that's always changing. He was then eighty-five years old, an African-American man who had owned and lived in “our” building for about forty years. I had met him several times before, and he always recognized me, and we would stand and talk in front of his shop about things we remember and changes that have ensued. Maybe some people would find it far-fetched, but I was certain that Scottie understood the link we shared by virtue of having lived at the same address, even if decades apart. Now he was standing at the doorway to his shop, and he waved and smiled.

“I know who you are,” he said. He was so kind, so open to perceiving a connection between us, so generous about sharing his thoughts.

But with the election only a month away, the conversation was unusually troubling. He talked to me candidly for the first time about his experiences as a black man in this country. He spoke about the loss of a sense of community and mutual caring in the neighborhood, and about a prevalent ignorance of history, and finally, the disaster that is Donald Trump.

"If he’s elected,” said Scottie, “it’s all over.”

He predicted chaos and civil discord, the beginning of the end to all we care about. I doubt that Scottie had any illusions about the imperfect and unfinished state of our democracy, and he surely experienced the flaws more directly and painfully than I ever did, but he clearly cared about the fate of our country.

“How can people not see this for what it is?" Scottie asked.

At one point, I realized he had tears in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I get emotional. I’m angry, but it it’s more than just anger. It hurts. It really hurts.”

His sadness and anguish broke my heart, and I thought I understood. And here’s where my well-intentioned white privilege kicked in, and the rose-colored tones of life viewed through a bubble.

“Oh, Scottie,” I said. “He’ll never be elected. Don’t worry. That’s not who we are.”

I can’t recall exactly, but I may have taken his hand or even hugged him when I said this. It shames me now to realize how presumptuous I was, and how indulgent and gracious he was. I guess I imagined that Scottie and I had basically the same perspective on all this, and that we were somehow allies. Did I dare to suppose that Scottie and I perceived the same dangers and felt the same outrage?

If so, my naïveté is cringeworthy. Yes, I grew up poor on this very street, a grandchild of immigrants, but my anxiety was diluted by a lifetime of open doors and choices, and my pain was buffered by privilege I didn’t even realize I had, and the idealistic spin of all my stories had right and good prevailing in the end.

So I sought to reassure Scottie, and he was dignified and tolerant of my awkward and misguided attempt to do so, but he understood what was happening on a far deeper level, and he looked away into the distance, not at all comforted by the effusive white woman who was once upon a time a little girl running up and down the stairs of the house he now lived in, playing tag and hopscotch on this very street.

And then Trump “won”…with the help of Russia and an obsolete electoral college system that handed him a victory despite losing the popular vote. But millions supported him and apparently still do, and his cabal of cronies and GOP enablers grow more brazen every day while he fleeces the nation, tweets word salad tossed with hate, and drags us ever closer to fascism. Meanwhile, a grossly mishandled pandemic has underscored tensions, divisions, and economic inequities that already existed. The bitter truths of overt and systemic racism are impossible to deny, and it’s a hey day for white supremacy. Chaos is a word Scottie used, and we’re seeing it. Even among those of us who thought we knew what it really was, the Trump regime is worse than we imagined.

I don’t know where Scottie is now. I looked up “our” old address, and the building has been sold. I wish I could apologize to him, or wish him well, or thank him for being so patient and honest with me. I want him to know that this terrible time has imbued me with a little bit more insight, and how much I respect him.

And I still yearn to tell him we are better than this. I hope we are.