My Privileged View

I’m a white woman. Living in a white world. I’ve spent most of my adult life working hard and raising a daughter. While I’m socio-politically aware, I haven’t spent as much time studying history as I might have. Needless to say recent events have led me to look inside myself and examine my attitudes. I’ve been advised by African American and white friends alike to “shut up and listen” and I’ve been doing that. But I’ve also been told that “silence is compliance and/or violence.” With that, as part of my self-reflection, I’ve decided to share an experience I had a few years ago…

Here goes...

During my daughter Layla’s junior year of college, she asked if she could bring a girlfriend home with her on spring break. Her friend had never been to L.A. “Of course she could,” I said. That would be lovely.

A few weeks before break she called to say she decided “not to come home this year” but ‘could her friend still come and stay with Adam and I?’

My world stops when Layla comes home. She’s my daughter. It’s worth it. (For family and close friends too.) But I wasn’t comfortable with a visit from Layla’s friend without Layla there. I lead a creative life which involves the constant collection of thoughts and it’s hard to collect thoughts when there are distractions. Plus, there’d be no prancing around naked or vocalizing in open spaces. And…I didn’t want to have to host anyone, show them around town, make them meals etc…smile if I didn’t mean it.

Layla said her friend (Kerra) would be renting a car and was totally self-sufficient. I wanted to make my daughter happy (you cave more easily when they’re at college…simply because you miss them). So, I said…Ok. I’d greet her friend, give her a hug, make her breakfast and hand her a key to the house. But then she’s on her own.

A few days before her arrival Layla called to say that Kerra was now coming with her boyfriend (who Layla had never met but she’s “sure he’s fine.”)

“Not Ok. This isn’t a hotel.”

She said, “Mama, please! They’ll never be able to find another place to stay now.”

Breathing, Breathing.

The day before the couple’s visit (they were driving up from San Diego) I texted and asked that they please arrive by 4PM because I had a gig that night. This way I could let them in and get them settled before I left the house. 

But next day, no Kerra by noon. Or by 1. I received a text saying they got delayed and the new ETA was around…6. I would now have to leave a key under a rock so they could let themselves in. When I returned from my gig at midnight they still hadn’t arrived.

Breathing, Breathing. God forbid my daughter think I’m uptight.

I go to bed. I don’t fall asleep. I hear a key in the lock at 3am. I do not get up. Two people I’ve never met are entering my home in the middle of the night.

I finally sleep, wake up at 9am, walk out of my bedroom and notice the door of the guest room is still shut. I tiptoe to the kitchen to make coffee. I hear some movement at the front door. I go to check it out and see a young lady (who I assume is Kerra) retrieving 2 suitcases from the trunk of a car which is parked right in front of our mailbox.

“Kerra?” I ask. She smiles and waves.

She is African American. She has orange-dyed dreads, long pointy fingernails with flames on the tips. A heavy girl with a very short sundress. I thought Layla’s friend would ‘look’ more like Layla. (What does that say?)

Then I realize I’m pleased that Layla has non-white friends. (What does that say?)

She rolls the bags into the house.

“I would have done this last night but I didn’t want to wake you up.”

Big hugs! Welcome to LA. Coffee? Kitchen…this way…

My phone buzzes. “Excuse me.” A neighbor calls to warn me that someone has been spotted going through mailboxes. “Ok…thx for the heads up.” (Only later would it occur to me that it might have been Kerra who was “spotted” — an unfamiliar person of color in a predominantly white neighborhood in proximity to a mailbox. If I were correct in my assumption this was profiling at its worst.) 

I return to Kerra. “Sorry we were so late,” she explains, “we had to sleep off some partying.” (I got the feeling she thought I’d think this was the responsible thing to do. IMO the responsible thing would have been to not party and arrive on time.)

Cream? Sugar? What classes do you have with Layla? “Oh no — Layla and I know each other from the coffee shop (where they both work). I had assumed she was a fellow student. A suite-mate? Someone Layla knew well.

Kerra says she wants to see LA — she knows so many people who’ve “come here to find their hustle.” Hustle? To me “hustle” means a 1970’s dance or a shake down of sorts. Had I culturally misinterpreted? Yes. Am I out of touch? For sure. (For the longest time I thought ‘LOL’ meant ‘lots of love.’) Of course, in retrospect I realize Kerra was interested in seeing the place where people come to work hard, follow a dream, make a life.

Moving on…

Into the kitchen comes her boyfriend. I can’t remember his name so I’ll call him J. It was J’s first time on a plane and it’s his birthday. He’s African American too. Tall. quiet. Sleepy. (Probably hungover).

I take them out onto the deck, point out the Griffith Park Observatory, the Hollywood Sign, Mulholland Drive. My privileged view.

I offer them breakfast. I tell them there are eggs in the fridge. She asks about bacon. No bacon. “We’ll go to the store and get some.”

“Really? Ok.” They leave, return and start cooking. Things are getting very busy in my kitchen.

I go into my office. My mouth waters from the divine aroma of sizzling bacon while at the same time I feel more and more agitated about the extensive activity in my kitchen. There’s gonna be a mess! I give it some time. It gets quiet in there. I take a peek. Pots and pans on the burners. Bottle of vodka on the counter. Through the window I see Kerra and J sitting at the table on the deck having breakfast.

I take a walk to clear my head. And when I return the kitchen is…SPOTLESS. Cleaner than how I’d left it. And they were gone for the day to see the sights. I open the fridge to make something for myself. No more eggs.

I call a few friends for perspective. Maybe I am uptight! I’m asked if I hid my jewelry. I had never thought to hide my jewelry. But now they’ve got me thinking. What if ADT Security had stopped Kerra and J last night: 2 black 20-year-olds in a driveway looking for a key under a rock? Would the cops have believed them if they said they were my guests? What if they were 2 white kids? I imagine they’d have just been asked if everything was alright.

For the next few days Kerra and J came and went. The morning of their departure we took some pics of us together to send to Layla. Arms around each other. Smiling. I meant it.

I knew they had left for good when I found the house key on the table by the door. I headed to the guest room to check the status. The shades were drawn. The sheets were still on the bed. So were some wet towels.

I stripped the linens and as I headed towards the laundry room I noticed a beautiful bouquet of flowers in a tall vase on the kitchen counter along with a handwritten note thanking me for a warm bed and a place to stay.

I talked to Layla about this experience. She suggested I wouldn’t have been as stressed out if her friends were white. I begged to differ. I wasn’t ok with the idea of hosting a friend from the start…before I knew anything about her. Or the plus-one!

I asked Layla if she would show up in the middle of the night to a home she’d never been to. She said she probably wouldn’t but she didn’t think it was a big deal.

I know this is “20 talking” but I would hope that any guest, any age, would know to not show up in the middle of the night. This was about courtesy not race.

She posited that if it had been a white friend who left linens and wet towels on the bed I wouldn’t care. I asked her how she leaves a bed when she’s a guest in someone’s home. She said she straightens the covers but doesn’t remove the sheets. What? I raised you better than that. (I suggested she do so from now on and go one step further and ask her host where she should leave the dirty linens. Or better yet, throw them in the washing machine, pour in some detergent and press start!)

She said, “Kerra isn’t like you, Mama. She’s from a different culture. In fact, anything that Kerra did in our home would be ok in hers. Probably in her mother’s home as well.”

1- I wonder what Kerra’s mother would say about that.

2- Shouldn’t a guest consider the culture of the home she’s visiting?

In any event both of us had a lot to think about. But in the meantime, there’d be no more hosting Layla’s friends without her being present.

Cut to a year later when unbelievably enough, I said “yes” again. This time to Layla’s then-boyfriend (who I had met previously) and 3 of his friends! Again — sans Layla. I reminded her about what had happened the year before and asked her to talk to the boys about being mindful.

They arrived on time. For 3 days they moved about the house. And the hot tub. They drove Layla’s Prius. They borrowed my phone charger without telling me. I made them all breakfast and cooked them 1 dinner. One morning they made bacon! They poured the grease down the drain and left the pan in the sink. I found empty toilet paper rolls on the bathroom floor and drinking glasses on bedroom dressers. One of them inadvertently mistook my laptop for his own and in the morning, I was like…where is my computer? After they departed, I found crumpled napkins and a plate next to an inflatable mattress that hadn’t been deflated. 

And you know what? I gave them passes left and white (not a typo). Sweet college boys. They’re young. They don’t know any better.

See where I’m going?

Chalk it up to youth? Yup.

Do I have higher expectations of girls than boys? I guess.

Is there unconscious-bias involved? F*ck! Yes.

Breathing, Breathing.

I’ve been doing some suggested reading (and Doc. watching) assigned to me by a black (can I say that?) and some white friends. This excerpt from Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility resonates. It asks me the same questions I’ve been asking myself lately:

Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean for me if this were true? How does this lens change my understanding of racial dynamics? How can my unease help reveal the unexamined assumptions I have been making? Is it possible that because I’m white, there are some racial dynamics that I can’t see? Am I willing to consider that possibility? If am not willing to do so, then why not?

I have a lot more work to do. This is a start.

It’s making me feel very uncomfortable.

I hear that’s good a thing.

(P.S. I received a thank you note along with a thoughtful gift from the boys the week after they left.) 

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