I just had an alarming interaction with two African-American young men.  The interaction was alarming not because of anything they did but, rather, because of what I did.  It was the kind of interaction that happened so quickly with so much unconscious processes that I’m scrambling to make sense of it.  As I reflect, I’m realizing my nervous system’s stress response reacted before my thinking brain did.  My nervous system said, “Danger!  Potential danger!”  My thinking brain would have, and eventually did say, “Wait, hold on!  You don’t know what’s happening right now.  Give it a minute. Check out the situation, see what they want.”  Before I knew it I was protecting myself from something that I may not have had to, and I was left with an overwhelming sense of guilt, shame, and confusion, feeling like this is a total conundrum.

It’s a Saturday night after dark, and I was approaching my apartment building wrapping up an evening walk with my dog.  I’m a single woman living alone in a city that has historically been sensationalized for its crime and violence, but in more recent years has experienced notable gentrification.  When I walk alone, particularly at night, I’m always aware of my surroundings.  I’m often wary of men I encounter, consciously trying to strike the right balance between offering friendliness juxtaposed with portraying a persona of “Do not even think for longer than a millisecond of messing with me because I am not the woman to f**k with.”  It’s not an easy balance to strike.  I’m a friendly, jovial lady interested in connecting to other humans; I’m compelled to offer kindness and recognition.  It’s sad that I have to censor that for fear that offering a cordial greeting to the wrong man I pass on a walk could render me unsafe.  This is a part of what makes being a woman in this society and culture challenging.  I have to stifle innate parts of who I am to protect myself from being hurt or taken advantage of or victimized.  So, in an overarching way, I’m very aware that I’m vulnerable to being the victim of violence as a woman.

As I approached one of the two doors I have to unlock to get into my building, two young Black men. likely in their mid-20’s, fairly abruptly, although not aggressively, approached me.  One of them came close, seemingly out of nowhere, and said, “Ms., how many rooms are in the apartments?”  Instinctively and deliberately I made sure to close the first gate door, as though they were coming after me and as if to say, “Now you can’t get in.  I’m safe now.”  I was sending a message to them and myself that I was now safe from them, even though I don’t actually think there was anything really to keep myself safe from.  I did answer curtly, stating only, “several” in response to his question about how many bedrooms the apartments housed.  “Several” doesn’t even make sense as an answer to that question.  Even in that moment, I was thinking- “Should I answer honestly?”  “What’s he asking me?”  “Is it safe to answer?”  The truth is, I still don’t know.  It may have been an innocent query; a genuine interest in the apartment building.  My fear now is that that IS what it was, and that my own implicitly programmed bias led me to believe two young Black men were dangerous to me.  The short flight of stairs up to my apartment door afforded me the realization of what had just happened; how I had just reacted, and how terribly awful and wrong I felt for that.  I hurried my dog inside the apartment, and ran back down to see if I could offer the two men an apology, and a normal accurate answer to the question he asked about bedrooms.  They were gone from the street so I wasn’t able to relinquish my guilt and acknowledge my bias in that way directly to them, which is regrettable.

Thank goodness I’m not a police officer, or a citizen with a gun.  Thank goodness my stress response told me only to close the door and answer in a nonsensical way.  Thank goodness my implicit bias only expressed itself in a rude and pithy series of moments.  Still, the pain I feel now from my own reaction feels glaring and sharp.

Almost immediately after, I Marco Polo’d one of my best friends, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a mother of an African American daughter who she recently adopted, and told her I was overcome with guilt.  In the direct aftermath I told her I thought I was “a little scared” when they approached me. It likely was more than a little; there was downright fear present.  I later said to her, “I’m beside myself, I think I was scared.”  The fear hasn’t been conscious until I was removed from it.

Together we took a stab at how to hold both the legitimate fear and reality of danger I face as a single woman living alone AND how longstanding deepy engrained and historically-influenced messages about skin color contribute to even my own implicit bias, dictating how I respond and navigate this world. This was alarming because I consider myself so incredibly socially progressive, such an extreme advocate for marginalized, underserved, and oppressed populations.  I’m aware of, sensitive to, and an advocate for the plight that people of color face in this country.  And I’m frightened by the reality that even I operate from this type of automatic biased response.

I am compelled to make meaning out of this experience, and learn more about the ways in which my nervous system implicitly operates, even in the face of my conscious brain’s decision-making and judgment processes.  I vow to put in the work required to change this in myself and support others who want to as well because really what we need is a reckoning of the reality of the judgment and fear and bias that we are all operating from influenced by long-standing inherent systems of institutionalized racism that permeates our country in a very real and palpable way.  Tonight I felt it in myself, and I am shocked and humbled.

I feel my privilege and the guilt of the oppressor.  I, too, feel the fear and deep pain and fury of the oppressed.  I KNOW we all see color.  I KNOW we operate from unconscious fear-based places; I help people with that in my work all the time.  I’m so often disheartened by the deleterious impact of judgments made by well-meaning people.  I myself, as a Jewish woman, have been regularly assaulted with micro- and macro-aggressions.  When I was in high school someone actually carved a swastika into my Dodge Shadow.  It was awful and embarrassing, and scary, and I remember feeling terribly alone in it.

HOW in the good hell can I be a perpetrator?  I was and I am capable of it again.  We all are.  And I need to own that, we all need to own that, and confront that, and recognize that it is such an insidious programmed process living so deeply under and above the surface; I will do whatever it takes to undo that process.  I make that commitment to myself and to my fellow human beings who suffer because of the barriers and harsh treatments they endure resulting from race, culture, country of origin, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, ability status.  I am an ally, and I am also sorry.

If you’re interested in keeping this thought process going, or you have any further reflections, thoughts, ideas, feelings, please do reach out.

Photo by @adammarcucci