black man loose in Germany

I'd like to take a minute to try and write about a very difficult subject - race. I've been writing a lot about personal growth and spiritual experiences on mountaintops and finding yourself, and lots of things that 20-something white girls from America write about. But today, I will make an effort to delve into this complex and charged topic, because it has come to the forefront of my life as of late.

In case you haven't noticed, J.J., the guy I've been travelling with for the past week, is black. Now right away, some of you over-educated intellectuals might be thinking, why is she pointing that out? It doesn´t matter. And some of you might be thinking, yeah, I've been wondering what's been up with that black guy in your pictures. And some of you are thinking all sorts of other things that I couldn't possibly guess. I hadn't honestly thought a great deal about the fact that J.J. is black, except that it had quite an effect on his prison story. But tonight, my eyes were opened in a drastic way.

It started this morning in Lucerne, Switzerland. We stopped there on the way to Munich. We had an hour to walk around, and J.J. decided he wanted some tea. We looked all over, and finally found a little cafe. It was a typical Swiss place; very clean and filled with crisp, polished people with tucked in shirts and carefully groomed hair. There was a flea market across the way, so I told J.J. to just run in and get some tea to go, then meet me over at the flea market. He got very uncomfortable, looked down at the ground, and said, "Nah, I don't really want tea anyway." I said, "What are you talking about? You've been going on about wanting tea all morning. Just run in and order some quick." He just stood there, staring at the ground. This was very unlike J.J. He is the gregarious guy with an arresting smile that pulls everyone around him in. He is interminably, unshakably confident. Finally, he said, "I don't want to walk in there and, you know, disturb people's morning with my tats showing and everything." (He was wearing a grey tank top with a scarf, which revealed the 4 philosophy tattoos he has on his arms.) To make a long story short, I argued and argued with him, telling him how ridiculous that was, and that he had as much right to be in there ordering tea as anyone else. We eventually agreed to disagree, as he told me I just wouldn't understand.

This evening in Munich, we got some cheap dinner, then sat out at a sidewalk coffeeshop, drinking delightfully American coffee and talking. Our chairs were next to each other. He had his arm around me as we looked through pictures on our cameras. I was aware of lots of people passing by, but I wasn't looking at them. All of a sudden J.J. said, "Are you seeing this?" I said, "What?" He said, "The way people are looking at us." I said, "You're crazy. Come on, this is the 21st century. A white girl sitting with a black man is hardly something out of the ordinary, even if the guy is 6'5". Would you stop with this black man stuff already?" He said, "Just watch." I started noticing the people's faces as they walked by, and I was floored. Almost every single person stopped their conversation and turned their heads to look at us. The looks spanned across the board from quick, furtive glances to lingering stares, with several dropped mouths and eye rolls thrown in just for fun. Wow. I couldn't believe it. Could I really have been this naive? Some people even looked directly into our eyes and gave purposefully disgusted "hmphs." My own mouth dropped. J.J. said, "Now do you believe me about the cafe this morning in Lucerne?"

What the heck?? This throws off my entire concept of the world. This is not how things are supposed to be. This is not how I thought they were. I mean, at least not in the "civilised" western world. What is it? J.J. gave all kinds of explanations. People think I'm taking one of the "good" black men? They are just surprised to see a tall black man in the middle of Munich? Admittetly, it is an unusual sight. Are they just curious? Judgemental? Doesn't make sense at all. What do you think? What is one to do with a black man on the loose in Germany? Does it make you mad that I'm even daring to write about this?

I guess I operated under the idea that black and white cultures weren't really different. I wanted to be an open-minded, post-modern thinking girl without bias or stereotype. J.J. has shown me to be wrong. There are certainly differences. Whether they're due to nature or nurture, I don't know. And I'm also not sure whether these differences are good or bad, or whether those words are even helpful.

J.J. and I started having fun with the whole looks-from-passersby thing, commenting on what we thought people might be thinking. But I felt badly, because in the end, I could walk away and continue to blend in to the crowd, and J.J. would walk away and continue to be a 6'5" black man who has to think about whether he feels comfortable getting tea at certain cafes in Europe. Not that he wants to walk away from that, but what must it feel like not to have the option to blend in?