Shannon Sharpe said something that Black people have been saying for a long time, “…if you say, “I got black friends” and you can’t empathize with the plight that black people are going through right now, you don’t have black friends. You know black people.”
This past weekend, without sharing too many details, I had to drive with my wife to Arkansas. I from the moment I agreed to go felt anxious, overly stressed, and if I’m being totally honest with you (and myself) terrified with the prospect of this drive. With no “barber shop” to go to, every day leading to the drive became more paralyzing and at times I actually found it hard to breathe. We left at 3:00 a.m. the time is important because mine and the generations before understood the importance of getting to your destination before dark, especially in the south was/is mandatory. If you want to understand read https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/sundown-towns/ .
The drive to St. Louis and beyond allowed me to mentally get me shit together, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel a decades long Wallace family tradition, I honestly felt normal at that point. We switched and Michelle took over driving at this point. I don’t sleep when anybody else is driving thanks to Doug Whitmore when we were in college (a story for another time) but right around Branson I dozed off. I woke up when Michelle shouted, oh shit! I didn’t know what was happening at first and asked what was wrong, before she could answer I saw the blue flashing lights…at that moment I had my first panic attack ever. I am a “rub some dirt on it”, “shake it off”, “ain’t shit wrong with you…it’s all in your head” person, I struggle to understand mental health and the associated care required but I know now that EVERY Black man suffers from some form of PTSD from just living in America.
So here we are driving in a big Ford F-150 Super Cab with Arkansas plates, pulled over by the police for speeding (which she was), me in the passenger seat barely able to breathe, looking into the rearview mirror on the passenger side, waiting to see additional cars pull up, backup walking towards the passenger side with hand on gun, waiting to be asked to step out of the car, trying to rehearse all the procedures ingrained from “the talk” so I am not shot and killed by the police.
The officer was friendly, never really even looked at me, walked back to his car and then came back with the $100 ticket and told Michelle to slow down. That was it. As we pulled off, she said I’m sorry and I didn’t respond. About an hour later I noticed she was crying; I had found my voice again and asked her why she was crying and she said because I was mad at her. She took my silence as anger instead of what it was, trauma. I told her I wasn’t mad; I had rubbed some dirt on it…
The rest of the time spent in Arkansas was relatively uneventful, the customary white person turning their head as if not looking at me makes me disappear, a moment when the sun was about to set and I got that tightness in my chest of knowing I needed to be in the house before that happened, and just driving around town while Black.
I wrote this because as I’ve to you before it’s cathartic…I’m still not ready to lay on someone’s couch.
