Monday Notes: 24 Hours of White Wealth and White Privilege

Inspiring Image #151: Transient (Sava... Inspiring Image #152: Transient (Colu...

Monday Notes: 24 Hours of White Wealth and White Privilege

3:00 PM: We arrive at his mother’s weekend/summer home: an African man, Fronteriza (Border Woman), and me, a Black American. We are greeted by a small house at the foot of a hill. The remaining three homes sit on top. “You’ll be staying at the shanty house,” we are told.

Shanty is unfamiliar, so I google it. It is a small, badly built house, usually made from pieces of wood, metal, or cardboard, in which poor people live. This shanty house holds three bedrooms, one bathroom, a full-sized kitchen, and a living room. On the living room’s windowsill sits a petite shadow box frame that holds two cotton bolls.

The discomfort begins where it always does—in the pit of my stomach.

6:00 PM: We are invited to dinner as artists: the African, a visual artist; Fronteriza, a curator; and me, a writer. Yet, we are not centered. Instead, a long, sliver of paper filled with sans serif outlines the meal and serves as the focal point: mixed salad, spicy cauliflower, lamb lollipops. As we wait for instructions, a white woman whispers, “This is a very conservative area. Not far from here, you’ll see Trump signs.”

My stomach signals an alarm.

7:00 PM: We thought we’d be introduced to the 25 or so guests who’d convened. Instead, we introduce ourselves and hold awkward conversations of varied interest, while swallowing the privilege of lamb lollipops.

8:45 AM: “How did you sleep?” the owner of the property asks.

“Not well,” I reply. “I awoke every two hours.”

“Oh yeah?” she says. “Why?”

I want to tell her it was the cotton bolls and the twin sized bed crafted for a child. I want to tell her it was the unease I felt not knowing what kind of white person she or her family were. Life has shown me there are types. I want to tell her it was because how did you sleep are the only words she has spoken to me, since her flaccid hello of yesterday.

Instead, I say, “For many reasons.”

Her humph clearly conveys confusion: How could I possibly not have been comfortable on her estate? I want to tell her the Ugandan man didn’t sleep well either, but I decide it is not my story to tell.

I am hungry. But breakfast does not satisfy me. I want to know if the cotton bolls are symbolic of her ancestors’ lived experience or a souvenir from a place that extolled American slavery. I hold my tongue.

8:50 AM: I am exhausted and so are Fronteriza and the African. We are scheduled to tour several Frank Lloyd Wright houses. It will monopolize much of our day. And I am no longer here for the bullshit.

“I studied Frank Lloyd Wright in elementary school,” I announce. “I attended a classical magnet school, and it was pretty much a part of the curriculum. And,” I add, “I lived steps away from Oak Park. I know what Lloyd’s houses look like; I understand the concept.”

He stuffs sausages in his mouth, swallows my statement, and says nothing. I hear what is unspoken. His curriculum will supersede my magnet education. Today, he intends to teach me something.

My stomach tightens.

10:56 AM: We have seen two replications of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses and two reconstructed ones. Amid Buddha busts and plastic cherry blossoms, I ask the tour guide, “What is the influence of Japan on Frank Lloyd Wright’s work?”

“Well,” she smiles slyly, “he’d visited, but he denied it having any influence.”

I quieted. No one here knows my family and I visited Japan in 2015. Kyoto, Tokyo, and Enoshima Island are distant memories, but close enough for me to recognize the lines and colors of Japanese temples and the integration of nature. Kyoto embodies a religion called Shinto.

12:34 PM: He decides we will skip the second tour.

“What did you tell them?” Fronteriza asks.

“That I have a group of unintellectual people who don’t want to see Kentuck Knob,” he jokes.

I laugh, so he doesn’t feel uncomfortable, but my insides fire.

1:51 PM: We begin a tour of Fallingwater. The Kaufmanns, a wealthy, white couple, commissioned Wright to create it—a weekend home. The concept feels familiar, except their guests slept in a guest house, not a shanty.

1:56 PM: A creek, reminiscent of Hakone Ashigarashimo-Gun, smaller and less assuming, snakes around the home and fascinates me.

2:01 PM: Another Buddha head, representing Japan’s and Buddhism’s progression is the focal point.

Wife’s quarters, husband’s quarters, son’s quarters. Unlike August Wilson, whose family of five slept between two rooms, it was common for wealthy people of a similar era to have their own space, complete with bathrooms and terraces; we visit each.

2:20 PM: Diego Rivera’s “Profile of a Man Wearing a Hat” hangs above the son’s bed.

“You recognize him, riiiight?” he asks Fronteriza.

I can’t decide if this question is racist or not.

2:27: We pass another Rivera painting. The tour guide explains that “At the time, this was considered unimportant art. The important art hung in their city home.”

2:29 PM: We saunter by Barthé’s Serena, a sculpture named after Rose McClendon, a Black actress who played in Porgy.

2:40 PM: The tour guide describes the Kaufmanns’ cook, Elsie, a Black woman who kept them well-fed and comfortable. On Sundays, when the Kaufmanns left, she and her staff stayed an extra day to clean the weekend they’d left behind. I’m grateful we don’t have to clean the shanty; they have someone else to do that.

“Thank you for mentioning her,” I say. “Many times, people like Elsie are marginalized. We rarely hear their stories.”

2:51 PM: The tour closes, and I cannot wait to leave this space, where people have enough money to commission artists and architects to build a secluded world for themselves, a world where folks feign ignorance about the influence of the Japanese on Frank Lloyd Wright, a world where a white middle-aged man’s knowledge trumps a middle-aged Black woman’s, a world where an older white woman can send her Black and brown guests to sleep in a shanty, among framed cotton bolls. I cannot wait to return to my own world and pretend none of this exists.

5:00 PM: We pile into the car and head back to Penn Ave and Atlantic—Fronteriza, the African, and me. My stomach loosens. I return to the safety of false security.