I couldn’t help but discreetly eye the figure approaching me. Her skeletal, deeply wrinkled visage appeared far older than I had anticipated. Dressed in an aged, sallow-orange garage sale sweater that consumed her slender 5’7 feet, 98-pound structure, she nonetheless held a vibrant aura. Her frosty blue irises glinted with the enthusiasm of a child on a Christmas day. ‘Oh my! Oh my,’ she cheered, embracing me warmly. ‘I’m thrilled to see you!’ This was a familiar pattern in our recurrent encounters: her delight at my appearance, my mechanical reciprocation, before settling down on her shabby couch for a nostalgic conversation about her beloved traditional ballads from the mid-20th century.
Our typical conversation would revolve around an age-old dilema. ‘In your opinion,’ I’d ask. ‘Who possesses more talent, Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole?’ She’d mull it over with shut eyes. ‘Nat King Cole,’ she’d eventually decree, affirming with a respectful nod of her head. Roughly an hour into our communion, I would rise to bid farewell, at which point her grin would vanish. A final awkward display of affection took place. ‘Don’t accept any wooden nickels!’ She’d caution me as I retreated. Despite our interactions, it appeared as though we shared no intersections in our lives. She was a pigmentless Irish Catholic lady, having been raised in a setting that casually deployed racially insensitive language, branded people of color as lethargic, and supported the segregation of the races. I, on the other hand, was a young African American male. Raised mainly in a network of foster homes in an African American urban setting, where general sentiment towards caucasian people ranged from deep skepticism to outright disdain.
Her identity in my life? My mother. Time has added complexity to this relationship, and she has metamorphosized into something more. In times of struggle, grappling with the barrage of emotions that many in the United States currently juggle, she’s the one I seek. The current reality is one of exhaustion, low morale, and burnout, generated by the ceaseless political and racial fissures. As David Brooks phrased it in a recent literary piece, an alarming number of Americans have devolved into states of passivity and discouragement, losing the ‘confidence to wish for more.’
These sentiments have been my constant companion for years. As someone involved in journalism, I’ve been a witness to almost every racially pivotal incident in the U.S. over the last three decades. This timeline spans from the racially motivated turmoil following Rodney King in 1992 to the surge in racial consciousness post the George Floyd incident. Each event has ignited a burst of hopeful anticipation for a monumental shift in societal attitudes; each has ended in a crushing wave of disappointment. Amidst such despair, I’ve pondered whether human nature’s vulnerability to prejudice and factionalism undermines democracy’s very foundation.