For weeks after my thirty-fifth birthday party, I was restless. Nothing was fun anymore. I had a two-foot-high stack of comics next to my bed. I went to the comic book store dutifully each Wednesday when the new books arrived. I’d pay for them, bring them home, and then sit them in the pile. I didn’t read them. I just didn’t feel like it. I’d kept up on the adventures of my colorful heroes since I was seven, but I just hadn’t been into it lately. I couldn’t seem to get into anything at all.
Maybe I was just tired. I had been working seven-day weeks for most of the previous five years. I’d get up at 3:30 and drive to my location for the morning show, then I’d either go to the station to prepare for the following day’s show or I’d do it at home. After that, I might nap for an hour or so and then get to work preparing my radio show. Next I’d read my customary seven newspapers and try to write some jokes for the stage and a television commentary for the noon news program at the station. Once that was done, I’d shower, get dressed, and go to a stand-up gig. After the show, I’d drag myself home at about midnight. I’d be exhausted, but too keyed up to sleep so I’d make myself a martini. After I drank it and showered, I’d climb into bed at around one. In two and a half hours, it would start all over again. Even though we lived in the same house, my wife and kids became passing acquaintances.
Some weeks were more challenging than others. I’d been doing a lot of work with Aretha Franklin’s band of late. She played Atlantic City quite frequently and I’d open the show. On those occasions, I’d catch a flight from Oakland to Philadelphia on Friday morning right after signing off the TV program. Upon landing in Philly, the casino we were playing would send a car that took me on the hour-and-a-half ride to Atlantic City, where I barely had time to shower, shave, change, and make the sound check. I’d eat a little something, maybe nap for an hour, and then I’d do the show. After the show, I’d work on writing jokes and commentaries in my room until I dropped off to sleep. This pattern continued through Sunday night when I’d run offstage to a waiting car that already had my luggage loaded. It would shuttle me the hour and a halfback to Philly where I would catch the red-eye back to Oakland. I’d land in Oakland at around three or three-thirty in the morning, catch a cab home, shower, shave, and then run out the door to my morning-show location where I’d have to be on the air at 6:45.
Five years of this. I was wound up like a drum, but I didn’t know what to do about it. My agency was sending me offers for engagements and a local Realtor I knew had some good deals on some investment property he thought I should look at. I hadn’t responded to either overture. I couldn’t decide. I was having trouble making up my mind. I couldn’t seem to decide the simplest things. I’d been driving poor waitresses crazy by changing dinner orders two and three times before settling on something. My focus was not as sharp as it normally was, either. I was spending more and more time looking for car keys that were already in my hand.
I always felt like I was on the verge of coming down with something. I was achy and dizzy a lot. My doctor said that I needed more exercise. He thought that it would relieve some of the stress and help keep my weight, which was starting to creep up on me for the first time in my life, in check. On his orders, I started running again. I had loved running. I did it for ages. I ran 10k races and I even finished the San Francisco Marathon, but in recent years, who had the time? I had to do something, though, so I made it a point to try and make the time to run at least a few miles every day.
It was a beautiful morning as I walked out the front door, dressed for my run. The sky was clear. The sun was shining. There was a slight chill to the air. It wasn’t cold; just cool enough so that a good run would bring my body up to a comfortable temperature. For me, that’s the point in my run where I’m just “misty”—not dripping with sweat, just a little moist all over. I love that feeling.
As I walked down the street to warm up, I saw a car I’d never seen in the neighborhood before. It was an older sedan, a little beaten up, with dents and oxidized paint all over the body. The car was parked along the curb about a block from my house. As I approached, I saw its occupants: two young black men in their twenties. One sat in the driver’s seat, the other in the backseat. This was weird. I didn’t recognize them. There weren’t many black people who lived in my neighborhood. I only knew of an older black couple who lived about a mile up the road.
As I walked by, the brothers looked at me, smiled, and waved. Nervously, I waved back. Why was I nervous? It was just two guys sitting in a car. I didn’t know why, but I just felt funny about them. My spider senses were tingling. What were these two guys doing here? This little Jiminy Cricket-like voice went off in my head.
“You mean, ‘what are these two black guys doing here,’ don’t you?“ it said. ”Just because they’re black men, you’re suspicious ofthem.”
“No . . . no, I’m not. Really,” I argued. “They’re just out of place here.”
“Out of place, my ass,” Jiminy said. “You don’t like seeing niggers in your neighborhood. You’re just as prejudiced as the white people.”
Was he right? No. He couldn’t be. I’d been on the other side. I’d dealt with this stuff all my life. I tried to rationalize with him.
“C’mon, people don’t just sit in their cars in this neighborhood.”
“You mean black people don’t just sit in their cars in this neighborhood. They could be here for a million reasons. Maybe they’re picking somebody up. Maybe their car broke down and they’re waiting for Triple-A. Maybe they’re here selling Mary Kay products, for all you know. You’re a racist bigot!”
That’s impossible. I couldn’t be. Could I? No. He was wrong. This was suspicious. Or was it? Would I have the same feeling if it were two white guys sitting in their car? Would I wonder what they were doing there? Or would I just assume that they were visiting some of their white friends in my white neighborhood?
I remember Jesse Jackson saying once that when he walked down the street at night and heard fast-approaching footsteps, he was relieved when it turned out that they belonged to white men instead of black. That’s a big change for a black man who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and fought Jim Crow in the South. When he was a kid, it was the white footsteps charging behind you in the middle of the night that you had to worry about.
Was I doing the same thing? Had I been so brainwashed by white society, so indoctrinated by the negative images I had seen in the media, so influenced by the barrage of pictures and news footage of black men in handcuffs and on wanted posters that I had become one of“them”?
I’ve got to be honest and admit that I’ve had Jesse’s experience, walking down a dark street. If even I fear black men, what right do I have to be upset when white people fear and prejudge me? These guys were just sitting there. They were minding their own business. I should mind mine.
I took off on my run. I was so consumed by guilt that I barely noticed the five miles at all. I was running on autopilot. I was in a hypnotic haze. Was I now my own worst enemy? Had I become the very people who had hurt me the most?
“White-washed!” Jiminy said in my ear.
Forty-five minutes later, I finished running and began walking the same path I had walked for my warm-up. I saw the sedan. They were still parked there. They were still sitting in the same positions; one in the front seat, the other in the back. Jiminy sensed my apprehension and wouldn’t let up.
“Go ahead, bigot. Why don’t you call the police? Help! Help! There are niggers in the neighborhood without a permit!”
I tried to reason with him again.
“Come on, man. This is weird. They don’t live here.”
“Yeah,” he said, “and black people should never be in any neighborhood they don’t live in. Fuck freedom of association and all that shit. You’re right. They shouldn’t be here. Neither should an eight-year-old black boy carrying a baseball bat to the park.”
Ouch. His words stopped me dead in my tracks as I turned around and looked at the car from the rear. I saw from the lettering on the back of the vehicle that it was an Oldsmobile Cutlass. No license plate.
“This is different,” I muttered.
“Yeah. This time, you’re the bigoted fuck.”
“They’ve been sitting here for a long time. Who sits in a car for forty-five minutes? It’s weird, and I am the head of the neighborhood watch.”
“The neighborhood watch? You are just mister white upstanding citizen, aren’t you? You want to call the cops on them?” he said in my ear with disgust. “You want to turn them in? Go ahead. Call the cops to come hassle them for having the nerve to sit in a car on your block. Your white block. But, if you do, don’t ever complain again about white people jumping to conclusions about your black ass. Call the police. Go ahead. While you’re at it, I saw a Mexican walking down the street without a leaf blower. Turn his ass in, too!”
I walked around for another twenty minutes pondering what, if anything, I should do.
“Okay, I’m gonna walk around and cool off for another half mile. If they’re still here when I get back, I’ll call the cops. Two guys sitting in a car that long is probable cause.”
“Yeah,” Jiminy said. “Probably ’cause they’re black. You’re an asshole.”
I walked around for another half mile and then headed back toward home. They were still sitting there. I was still rationalizing.
“This isn’t right. There’s one in the front seat and one in the backseat.”
“Oh,” Jiminy said, “so I guess black people can’t have chauffeurs?”
“Fuck this!” I spat.
I went into the house, grabbed the phone book, and looked up the nonemergency number for the San Leandro Police Department. Jiminy was still on my ass.
“No, call 911. There are niggers on the block in your lily-white neighborhood. This is an emergency. Tell them to send SWAT and the National Guard!”
I dialed the nonemergency number and the operator answered.
“San Leandro Police Department.”
“Uh, yes . . . Hi . . . this is probably nothing . . . ” I let out a nervous laugh. “I’m sure it’s nothing . . . well, there are these two guys sitting in a car on my street and they’ve been there a long time and . . . ”
“Tell her they’re niggers and she’ll send a squad car,” Jiminy said.
“Shut up!” I yelled. Enough was enough. “Excuse me?” the operator said.
“Look, I’m sure it’s nothing, but there are these two guys who’ve been sitting in a car on my block for over an hour. I think it’s odd because people don’t usually sit and park on my street.”
Then, she asked the $64,000 question.
“What do they look like?”
“What do they look like? Well . . . they’re young. I’d guess late teens or early twenties.” I quickly mumbled the words, “They’re black,” before returning to a clear and intelligible, “and they’re in a beat-up, old white Oldsmobile Cutlass.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you say their race was again?”
I paused for a moment. It was a long moment.
“They’re black. African American.” There, I said it.
“I see,” she said. I could hear the clickity clack of her fingers furiously tapping on a computer keyboard.
“See?” Jiminy said. “She’s gonna send a squad car.”
“I’m gonna send a squad car,” she said. “Where exactly are they parked?”
I could hear Jiminy chuckle.
I gave her the precise street corner.
“They’re parked on the right-hand side of the street.”
She asked for, and I gave her, my name and address.
“We’ll check it out right away,” I heard her say as I mumbled a thank-you and hung up the phone.
“Happy?” Jiminy sneered.
I could hear him mocking me relentlessly.
“You are so much better than them, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m not. I’m just watching out for my neighbors, that’s all.”
“For your white neighbors, you mean.”
He laughed.
“Remember,” he said, “you’re still a nigger.”
I hung my head at my chest. I really felt shitty. Had I just racially profiled? To white America, the face of crime is young, black, and male. I’d just bought right into it. Would I have called the police on the young black boy walking to the park with his bat and ball? What in the world had happened to me? The oppressed had now become the oppressor.
As night fell, there was a knock at my front door. I opened it to find two San Leandro cops standing there. My heart leaped into my throat. There are certain things that elicit that response for me. One is when I sit on the butcher paper on the examination table in the doctor’s office (too many bad memories of childhood inoculations, I guess); the others are flashing red and blue lights in my rearview mirror, and two cops standing at my front door.
“Mr. Copeland?” one of the cops said.
I loved how they called me “Mr. Copeland” now.
“Yes?”
“We understand that you made a call to the department this morning regarding a strange vehicle in the area.”
Oh shit. They were gonna give me hell for wasting the valuable time and resources of the San Leandro Police Department on a frivolous call.
“Yes . . . Look, I said that it was probably nothing when I called. I didn’t mean to waste anybody’s time.”
“No,” the other cop said, “you don’t understand. The house they were parked in front of was burglarized.”
My jaw dropped.
“What?”
“We’re pretty familiar with their M.O. because they’ve been operating in this neighborhood for a few weeks now. The guy in the front seat is the driver and lookout. The one in the back is there to help the third with the heavy lifting.”
“Third? There was no third.”
“You didn’t see him because he was in the house looting it.”
The first cop spoke up again.
“They work in teams of three. The guy in the house pulls all of the cases off of the pillows and then fills them with as much loot as he can grab before he figures his time is up and he’d better get out of there. Kind of like a burglar’s shopping spree.”
Did he just say “loot”? I’ve never heard anybody say that in real life before. I smiled.
Well, Jiminy, what do you have to say about that? He was surprisingly quiet.
I asked the policemen, “Did you catch them?”
“No, by the time we got a squad car down here, they were gone.”
It was my fault that they had gotten away. If I’d called the police when I first thought about it, they would have been cooling their heels in a cell at that moment instead of scoping out the next house to rob. Maybe mine.
“We were hoping that maybe you could give us a better description,” he said.
“How?” I thought. They were young brothers.
“Yeah,” Jiminy said, “and they all look alike.”
“Shut the fuck up!” I yelled.
The cops looked at me.
“Sorry. Not you guys.”
I told them all I could about the car, its dents and lack of a license plate. My description of the burglars was vague. They were just two young black men. That’s all I could tell them. I didn’t know how tall they were—they were sitting down. There was nothing distinctive about their haircuts or clothing that I could see. The cops thanked me and were on their way.
I felt terrible, sick to my stomach. I didn’t understand it. I should have been jumping up and down with glee because I was right. My suspicions were validated. They were crooks. They were indeed up to no good. Calling the police was the right thing to do. I guess that’s why I felt so bad.
Calling the police was the right thing to do. Seeing two black men parked in my neighborhood meant that they were up to something. Did this mean that all of the times that I was stopped walking down the street, going for my run, or just driving along, minding my own business, the police were justified?
Now I was angry. I try so hard to live a good life. I try so hard to be a good person, husband, father, and citizen and all of that can be erased and painted with a brush of suspicion because of the actions of two black men I didn’t even know. What they do makes me look guilty in the eyes of the police and of white America.
I thought of all of the times that I watched the news or read the paper and learned of some horrific crime. I thought of the times that I learned about senseless violence, rapes and murders, carjackings and abductions, robberies and burglaries. I thought of how my first reaction was always, “Please, God, don’t let it be a black man. Please let the suspect be white.” Most times, I was disappointed. I was disappointed and I was angry because nearly every time it was a black man and it made my life harder. It made it that much easier to believe the worst about me. It made it simpler to overlook my accomplishments and attempts to make positive contributions to society. It gave aid and comfort to the prejudiced and the bigoted. It gave them the smug confidence to say, “See how they are?”
Yet, I was being told that I’m not a “real” black man.
I wished I hadn’t called the police. I wished that I hadn’t been informed of what they were up to. I was sick and I was sad and I just wanted to hide away and do what I should have done that morning: mind my own business. The problem was that anything negative or derogatory that black people do is my business because, like it or not, I’m stuck with the social ramifications of it.
“I can’t win. I can’t win,” the refrain went over and over in my head. “No matter what I do, I can’t win.”
“No, you can’t,” Jiminy said. “Why don’t you know that by now?”