Moments in a Waiting Room

As I sat waiting for windshield to be replaced, the television in the "customer service area" showed footage of violent protests going on in Baltimore. I focused most of my attention on essays, which I had brought along to grade, but I glanced every once in a while at the screen. It was hard not to watch, in the same way that it's difficult to turn away from a fatal car crash. According to CNN and MSNBC, the main perpretators are outsiders. Whoever it is, the damage is horrible and is only getting worse.

It seems that I've seen a lot of this lately in [insert city name here], but this looks like the worst since Los Angeles in the 90s. At the moment (I turned on CNN when I got home), looting and burning and fighting are streaming from the TV -- with no police presence whatsoever. I understand the frustration, to the extent that someone of my ethnicity can understand. What I don't understand is how this helps anything. The neighborhoods that are being trashed are not the highest-income areas, and the last thing they need is to have their businesses destroyed and robbed.

Back to the waiting room . . . a young Black woman waited for her repair too, among four White men and two White women (including me). I was struck by what it must be like to watch people who look like you do awful things as you sit among people who do not look like you. I wondered how I would feel to be in the reverse position, if the majority of "protesters" were White and I was the only White person in a room where that display was being presented. Maybe I'm making too many assumptions, but I'm pretty sure it couldn't be comfortable. Last week, one of my students said something about White people thinking that Black people are criminals. Some of my Facebook friends (who are Black) have recently posted memes that talk about "White America". This pisses me off. I don't think there is a single White viewpoint or a single Black viewpoint. I don't usually pay much attention to race at all, unless it ties in with something else I'm thinking about, as was the case today. I was actually surprised, but grateful, that no one initiated conversation about it. I think there are good places to talk about these issues, but a glass repair waiting room isn't one of those places.