Ride the Elevator, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

June 5, 2010 Martha Thomases 3 Comments

This story does not reflect well on me.  I’m going to tell it anyway.

In my defensiveness, let me fill in the backstory before I get to the main event.  Back in the 1980s, a friend of mine got in an empty elevator in an office building in midtown, pressed the button to go up, but instead went down to the basement,  where she was brutally robbed and raped. Those were different times.

Even today, when I’m not paranoid, I get creeped out by elevators that don’t do what I want them to do.  The ones at the hospital where i volunteer are notoriously slow.  When I am on the lobby floor, waiting to go up to 9, they frequently go down to the garage.  There is an arrow that shows this, and some people, sick of waiting, get on even though they will go in the wrong direction.  I don’t.  I’d rather wait the extra few minutes.

That’s the background.  Here’s what happened:

Last week, I was waiting for the elevator at the knitting store.  The store is on the fifth floor of a small building.  The second floor has a hair salon.  The third and fourth floors have small businesses including, I think, a design firm.  The fifth floor, along with the yarn store, has an accupuncturist (I think the whole thing should be called Needle Point).  The elevator is small, with a door that opens towards the front of the building (facing north) and another door that opens to the floors (facing west).

Ahead of me were two women, both African-American.  One was dressed as if for office work, in a red shirtwaist dress.  The other had a Mohawk that had grown into dreadlocks, and was dressed in gray pants and a ripped black-and-white camouflage print t-shirt.  She had multiple visible piercings.  The elevator came down to our floor, and they got on.  I saw the arrow indicate it was going to continue to go down, and I stayed back.

The arrow changed, now indicating the elevator would go up, and, as the door started to close, I put me arm in so I could get on.

“We thought you didn’t want to ride with us,” said the woman with the Mohawk.

“No, I didn’t want to go to the basement,” I said.

Then I thought about it.  These two women (who got out on the second floor to have their hair done) thought that I wouldn’t ride in the elevator with them because they are black.  They thought that either I was afraid of them (because all black people are criminals) or more of a pure bigot (who didn’t want to be in close quarters with black people for aesthetic reasons).

“That’s awful,” I said.  “I’m so sorry.”  I meant it.

I’m upset to think that those two women, whatever they looked like, thought I was insulting them, but it’s not about me (or rather, it’s not any more about me than every other thing that happens in the universe is).  Are their lives full of everyday slights like this?  Is an experience I consider a respite – something fussing over me and my hair – routinely ruined for them by ignorant, bigoted assholes?

When someone says, “I’m not a racist,” I assume that person is a racist.  We are a racist culture.  The best we can do is be aware of it and struggle against it.  I can acknowledge that, as a middle-aged white woman, I don’t have to deal with strangers assuming that I mean to harm them.  I don’t walk by stores and see store owners lock their doors.  Taxis stop for me.  This gives me time to think of other things, such as how to create peace in the Middle East, or what kind of yarn I want.

That’s how racism works.  That’s how those of us who are white benefit, even when we’re not actively (or consciously) doing anything oppressive.

I still don’t want to take an elevator to the basement.  But that’s my problem, not theirs.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, is in Los Angeles this week visiting her son, the Greatest Human Being in The History Of Humans.  On Tuesday evening, June 8, she’ll be attending The Scratch Show at Hollywood Billiards (5757 Hollywood Blvd.) at 8 PM, and urges you to do the same.