The Color of a Lie

by Kim Johnson

Normally I’d have avoided eye contact for fear of an altercation or the inevitable What the hell are you looking at? response. But I was supposed to be white, so I looked him in the eye.

In Chicago, it was a game to me and my friends. Rule number one of playing white was to never be seen alone. I’d enter all-white diners, not hiding out in the back hoping to be ignored, but sitting right next to a person at a counter. This way I could blend in with the customers. Then I would gather up multiple food orders and meet my boys in an alley. But here, passing wasn’t playing. It was permanent.

All my life I’d learned how to stay out of a white person’s way. I crossed the street if I had to. Never made eye contact unless they said, “Look at me, boy.”

I knew what it meant to pass—most often it meant that never the two worlds should meet. It was an unwritten rule to let them be.

That’s the thing about being in your own skin: nothing else fits the same.

“We can’t ever get ahead, because the deck is stacked against us. I’m buying us time to climb a hill before we fall back down. We’re caught in a scam that has the bottom half bamboozled, believing that the American dream is achievable by those who deserve it. Work hard enough. Then they justify burning up our justice. Our access. Our dream. The very thing this country was created to uphold. But this country only knows how to rule in terror and by blood. The physical and the metaphysical. The hate that has now fueled this country against us is as visible as skin color and as invisible as the soul.”

“I fought a war so ugly, so destructive, only to come home and find out we were fighting overseas so we’d be too tired to fight at home.”

“Calvin, there is no hope for us. Our history is we’ve been slaves longer than we’ve been Americans. And we’re now told, ‘You’re free. Be off and make it.’ As long as we stay within glass walls.”

“What I did is simply remove the glass. Remove the man-made barrier. The construct of race. So, son, I’m not saying you have to hate who you are. I just want you to have a chance to see what it’s like when that glass isn’t controlling you.

This is part of the Lenapehoking, the land of the Lenape people, who were the indigenous people here. But this land is also known as the site of several Underground Railroad stations. Long ago, a massacre occurred by slave catchers in the Capewoods. Right near that church, where everyone thought they were safe.”

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—the lie passed into history and became truth.

I’m the great pretender…. I seem to be what I’m not, you see….

I felt the mask I’d been wearing take over me. I knew who I was, and yet Levittown had twisted that all around.

I’d make something of myself—I’d be like Thurgood. I’d make sure that Charlotte’s life meant something. Be a part of changing the world, making it the one that we wanted. And it was the drum of Martin, of Rosa, of Emmett, that would show me how.