We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

When the bullets hit him, first his arm, then his stomach, it doesn’t feel like he’d always imagined it would.

He was wearing his headphones—Meek Mill blasting in his ears—when he thought he heard shouting, felt footsteps pounding in the alley. He turned and instinctively reached for his phone in his pocket to turn off the music. That was stupid. He knew better. No sudden movements. Don’t be a threat. Do what they say. His mom had drilled this into him since he was old enough to walk.

He pictures Riley Wilson, the pretty one on Channel Five, with her bright red lips, her voice smooth as melted chocolate: “Fourteen-year-old Justin Dwyer was shot tonight by Philadelphia police officers….”

It was easy for Jen, who, unlike me, fits in everywhere, with everyone.

Mainly because Cookie—a woman who uses “scrapbook” as a verb, constantly references her Pinterest boards, and refers to Chip and Joanna Gaines by their first names—keeps saying things like, “It’s the Year of the Baby!” as if “Year of the Baby” is a thing people say.

You gotta work twice as hard to get half as far as them, baby girl. It was a mantra most Black kids were all too familiar with, as ubiquitous as reminders to lotion up ashy knees.

It was supposed to be the happily-ever-after part; what we didn’t understand is that adulthood would be a relentless series of beginnings—new cities, new jobs, new relationships, new babies, new worries.

“Oh yeah?” I can guess the reason Kevin thinks this guy and I would make such a great match. Jen takes a big bite of a crab cake and talks as she chews. “His name is Kayvon Freeman.” And there you go: a fine upstanding brother.

In almost thirty years I’ve seen about every expression Jenny can make. I know her face like I know my own. But the look she has right now, as she reads Kevin’s message, is one I’ve never seen. I grab her arm. “What’s wrong? Is Kevin okay?” She doesn’t respond, too focused on opening the Uber app. “I have to go.” “What? What happened?” “I have to go.”

Lou always said tears were like pets and men, useless and needy, and made a point of ignoring me whenever I cried. By six, I’d learned not to bother.

That first semester away, I had met more than a few white girls who were too eager to claim me, who were proud of themselves for going to college and getting themselves their very own Black friend, checking off all those freshman-year experiences—get a tattoo, hook up with a senior, meet people “different from you.”

Kevin and I may not be close, but there’s still an intimacy by proxy.

You asked him to drop his weapon. He went into his pocket. Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six, man.

Riley had once tried to explain this particular mindfuck to me: you could never be sure what was about race and what wasn’t, so you always had to second-guess yourself (Was that because I’m Black?). In that moment, I got it—in Cookie’s mind, Annie made for better wedding pictures.

It’s not like Kevin’s going to get indicted, man. These investigations are all for show. No cop ever serves time.”

There was one night when we both got shitfaced and he started in on a story about a couple of cops who would threaten people for arrests for stuff like jaywalking or loitering or traffic stops just so they could shake them down for cash.

“Made him give him everything in his wallet and a bag of weed that was in the glove compartment and let the guy go. Hazard pay, he called it.”

But sometimes we need to break a few rules, especially this new DA’s rules, to get the job done.

Annie sets down the cards and looks up at Cookie. “All I’m saying is, would Kevin have been so afraid of a fourteen-year-old white kid that he would have shot him?”

That’s what my life would have been like, no children, no degree, no great career… nothing. On those long dark nights, I used to bargain with the universe: If you just give me this, I will never ask for anything else.

But that seems so stupid now. Of course life can get worse. It can always get worse.

I’d pushed back, respectfully, about a story, and he’d made a comment about my “attitude” and then called me “uppity.” And there it was, its coded meaning clear as the glass panel in his office, through which he occasionally sneered at me like he was mad I wasn’t more grateful to be graced with a job in “his” newsroom.

It had been a few years since my last serious bout with depression, long enough for me to believe that maybe it wouldn’t happen again, but I was wrong. That night, I could feel it coming on like the first hint of a tickle in the back of your throat before a cold.

Why do they hate us so much?

It kills me how some people want so badly to believe racism is buried beneath layers and layers of history, “ancient history,” they say. But it’s not. It’s like an umpire brushing the thinnest layer of dirt off home plate: it’s right there. Only too often the trauma, the toll of it, remains unknown generation after generation.

All I’d hoped was that it would be better for y’all. But here we are again, fifty years later and ain’t nothing changed but the music. I swear it’s like we’re on a damn treadmill set to the highest setting and we just keep trying to climb, going nowhere fast,” Dad said, taking a giant bite of his peach pie.

So maybe the marching, rallying, showing up, it serves a purpose. It says, We will not be invisible or afraid. We will not give up. And that’s not nothing. It might actually be everything.

Yes, I’d slipped off my coat and I’m wearing black pants and a black sweater. But no, it isn’t the outfit.

This is always the scariest part of depression, the panicked edge where you think, If I can hold it at bay, stay out of its grip, I’ll be okay. The fear of the fall is so much worse than the bottom, because once you’ve let go, once you’re in the darkness, there’s comfort in the dull surrender. It’s easier than the fight.

It’s instantly clear—before she even speaks—that she’s one of those people who seem to have a field of energy around them, drawing you toward her like a magnet, all the makings of a great politician… or a cult leader.

She pauses as the crowd breaks into applause—the guy who handed me his coat whistles loudly—then continues.

That every single social, political, and legal system in this country is built and maintained by white people, on the bedrock idea of white power, and that allows you to move through the world with a basic confidence in your sense of safety, opportunity, and respect.

That as white people you are automatically associated with everything that is good and right and ‘normal,’ and everyone else’s experiences and value are weighed relative to that.

What will you sacrifice? What are you willing to put on the line? Are you going to send your kid to the public school down the street? Are you going to rent your house to a young Black family? Are you going to hire more eager dark girls with kinky curls to be your junior executive? Because your well-meaning intentions, your woke T-shirts, your Black Lives Matter tote bags, your racial justice book clubs are not going to cut it.”

I get lost looking for the bathroom and find myself peering into the kitchen—there are two Black or brown faces out there, including my own, but in here, there are dozens of brown people serving and washing dishes who smile at me warmly.

And you know how these white folks just love to be chastised, like it’s their racial penance or something. Makes them feel like they’re learning. All they want to do is stay learning…” Her eyes roll with the word. “Like that does a damn thing. Let’s just hope it gets them to open their checkbooks though…” She trails off, then turns to look at me. “Before I decide one way or another about this interview, I have a question for you.”

“Seriously though, a white man would come into this office, or a boardroom or whatever, and believe he had the duty—the power—to change things, make history, lead a charge. Well, I do too.”

It’s a dangerous combination when we have officers with weapons and all the power, who also feel superior to the people they serve, when they look at our communities as places to control and police rather than protect and serve.

“Some men ain’t kind, sweetie. Some men are. We need to protect each other from the bad ones, because no one else will,” Gigi whispered as she rocked me gently. “So if that man ever touches you again, so help me God I’mma go to your mama’s house to give him a beatdown he won’t forget. You tell him that, you hear?” The next time he went to tickle me, I looked him straight in his beady eyes and said, “I told my grandmother that you were a bad man. You better not touch me. Or else.” I’d never felt so powerful, never mind that he laughed in my face. He also never touched me again.

I love my husband and I made a vow to stand by him for better or worse, but never did I think that worse would include my son being raised by a man who murdered a child. No, Mrs. J, it will never be okay again.

And to survive, you couldn’t get too mad, too upset, too defiant, because there would be consequences… a lost job, a lost mind… or worse, a lost life. It was a message that wormed its way deep inside of me, and stayed there like a clenched fist.

White folks are gonna do what white folks do, and the way I see it you can be resentful and angry all the time and let it eat away at you, which some people do, and how can you blame them? Or you can choose to control the one thing you can: your mind-set. You can decide, Nope, I’m not going to let them get to me. I won’t be bitter, I’m going to be better—and better doesn’t mean just working hard. It comes down to character, an ability to be defiant in your joy no matter what they do. That’s what your mom and I tried to teach you kids.”

But that would mean Officer Murphy testifying against his partner. I want every officer on the PPD to understand that they’ll be held accountable for their actions, but that they are also accountable to the larger ethos and credibility of the whole department—no more cover-ups, no more turning the other cheek, no more blind loyalty. Every officer has to hold the others to the highest standard, and that means honesty and transparency, from the top down.

His favorite movie was The Lion King. “I cry every single time.” “Who doesn’t?” I replied. “Sociopaths,” he said.

Dating a white man—marrying one, if it came to that—felt disloyal. I always thought I should end up with a fine upstanding brother, build up the community, have two beautiful brown-skinned children who would be a credit as well, advance their race, the cause. Not with this white guy who played lacrosse in high school, went to Williams, and came from money to boot. Sometimes, as I lay beside him in bed, his pale body against mine, one word would float through my mind: “sellout.”

Part of our friendship, of any relationship really, is the tacit agreement to allow a generous latitude for flaws and grievances. A trade-off that goes both ways, glass houses and whatnot—and besides, if you start holding your friends accountable for all their flaws, if you let the annoyances add up on a mental spreadsheet, the whole thing could come toppling down.

If it wasn’t for my job, I would be out there too, sign in hand. I might even be screaming through a bullhorn at those women with the banner. “Tell your husbands to stop fucking killing us.” But that’s not my part in this.

He got ten years’ probation.”

On paper, I don’t end up with the white guy, especially considering how consumed I’ve been these last few months (or a lifetime, really) with all the ways race oozes its sticky tentacles into every relationship, every interaction, every intention. It’s damn near blown up my relationship with my best friend. But here I am, my cheek on this pale chest, realizing that Corey may well be a white man, but he’s no more “wrong” or “wrong for me” as a best friend or a life partner than Jen is.

That white folks will just go about their lives and pity Black folks, and wonder why they can’t get ahead, get a break, just behave already, listen to the police. Those white folks will send their children off to school and know they’re safe. They’ll do all the things white folks have done for years and somehow be able to tune out the cries: Good Lord, please, is it so hard to stop killing our children? Can you stop justifying their murders?