Today I was going into a store — alright, a liquor store — and encountered an awkward moment wherein a man was insisting on coming out the same door, the entrance. I stood still, waiting for him to figure out he should step to the right, to the exit door, but he didn’t. Instead he flung open the glass door in front of him and ushered me in. “You’re welcome,” he said sarcastically under his breath as I walked by.

I circled right out, through the exit door, and shared with him that he was actually in the wrong, using the entrance as an exit, and thus my lack of appreciation. I’m not sure he heard me. I went back into the store once more and picked out my wine — alright, my box of wine — and brought it to the befuddled sales clerk.

Why was I so mad, I wondered? What’s the big deal about using the wrong door? Am I such a rule follower, as a friend of mine once accused? Lugging my box of Chardonnay home I realized that the reason I was so angry, why the encounter felt so frustratingly familiar, was because it was emblematic of today’s society. The person involved did the wrong thing and yet I was supposed to thank him for his willingness to acknowledge me in the process. He was entitled to that. This was all about denial, about arrogance, about seeing those around you as wrong simply because they do not thank you for being you.

As a woman I have experiences like this fairly regularly. People of color, oh pretty much all the time. Is everything about race? Yes. And then gender. And for women of color – well, “major systems of oppression are interlocking,” according to the Combahee River Collective statement. “Intersectional,” we might say these days.

So, the brown store owners requested that their customers use one door for entering and another for exiting; the white man chose to use the door he preferred; the white woman was accused of ingratitude for not acknowledging the white man’s performance of a “chivalrous” gesture as he ignored the directives of the brown people. Way too much reading into the situation, you say? I will respect that opinion. But here’s what I say: it’s a tiny illustration, a shining microcosm, of our culture.

Today I watched the coffin of John Lewis being pulled by horse and carriage across the Edmund Pettus bridge. I thought he looked so all alone; it was a lonely scene. And I thought how his soul must be so tired, exhausted by the work it took to be a Black man in this country. And he spent even more energy, calling out those who believe the country is theirs alone, who think it is their inheritance to choose their doors — and who expect thank-yous when they decide, every once in a while, to let others in those doors.

Today, as I walked in the 97 degree heat, I listened to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer interview scholar Eddie Glaude, chair of Princeton’s African-American studies department and author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. Glaude’s sensibilities surrounding where we are right now in this world, and what Baldwin might have had to say about it, were profound. And then he went and read some Baldwin aloud, so you know things got deep.

Glaude references the term “after times” in his book which he attributes to Walt Whitman. Glaude uses this term to describe what others might call a backlash, that horribly inevitable moment when American racial progress is answered with resistance, often in the form of violence. Baldwin suffered as he witnessed the after times of the Civil Rights Movement, falling into despair, according to Glaude, after Dr. King was assassinated. There is something both affirming and devastating in knowing that a man such as Baldwin, who had seen so much go wrong in his years, could still feel so deeply betrayed.

Glaude explained that with his book he is looking to James Baldwin to help him contend with the “doubling down of ugliness” that he himself is witnessing in his America at this moment. He then shared an excerpt from Baldwin’s “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity” that included the following:

“You must understand that your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less.” https://bibliotecadaluta.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/james_baldwin_randall_kenan-the_cross_of_redemptio.pdf

“Pain is the bridge, ” said Glaude wearily, after reading.

The denouement of this interview may well have been a caller into the show, a man named Deforest (sic). He shared a moment he had with Baldwin many decades before. Quoting the Bible he had asked, “Mr. Baldwin, how shall we sing the songs of the Lord while in a strange land?” (Psalm 137:4) Apparently Baldwin hesitated, and then answered, “I don’t know.” And then, in another beat Baldwin added, “But I simply know we must.” https://www.wnyc.org/story/james-baldwin-today/

I agree that we must. And those of us who bear less pain because of our privilege must also work to amplify the songs of those who continue to be drowned out. That is our personal must.

Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century, by Barbara Ransby, is a handbook, a history book and could even be called a self-help-book-for-the-moment. I am so grateful to the amazing couple who introduced this work to me and then took their time to create a reading group around it. This sort of thing is happening everywhere and, in ways different but no less valuable than the protests, the collaboration is powerful.

As I made my way through the Scribd copy of this book, I highlighted Ransby’s well-turned phrases, things I didn’t know, and even (selfishly) a few affirmations that my own work and thinking is on the right track. For example, my keen interest in foregrounding oral histories of women of color lies in my belief that they just don’t get enough play in history compared to men — and White people in general. Ransby’s book confirms this:

“While high- profile activists have emerged from Ferguson, and from the Black Lives Matter Movement and Movement for Black Lives (BLMM/M4BL) in general, and have gained new levels of celebrity, most have labored in relative obscurity. It is the latter group whose stories are in some ways most revealing” (77).

Then, in relating the experience of activist Johnetta (Netta) Elzie:

“First, she observed Black men taking credit for the work of Black women organizers and usurping the mantle of leadership, when the majority of those she had seen on the streets most consistently were women.” (84)

As a White woman, my job is not to tell these women’s stories. They can tell them just fine by themselves. What I can offer are the research skills and historical knowledge that help unearth and contextualize so many of these subsumed stories. I urge people to read this book, to hear the stories of women – known and not – who keep working to make this planet a humane place to live. We owe them big time and can use our own time and talents to reciprocate their labor.