The Power of One-to-One Connections

This is a follow-up to my story about assisting Chandan, a young man who had never lived in his own place, was not employed and needed help caring for his 3-year-old daughter. For more on the original story, read here for the beginning and here for the unfortunate ending.

There are so many lessons to be learned in this experience. The biggest one I'll be adhering to is to donate to organizations instead of to the people those organizations are helping, unless it's someone I personally know and trust. But there are other, smaller, more hopeful lessons to be learned. Truly, every day that someone reached out to me to ask what Chandan needed or made a donation to the GoFundMe campaign, my heart filled with gratitude. 

I learned that people genuinely want to help others in need. One of the reasons why the fundraiser for Chandan was so successful was because all of the donations were helping one person who shared his story. The need was clear, the impact of giving was obvious. In the Twin Cities there's an organization called Bridging that basically does exactly what my donation drive was doing: provides furniture and household goods to people coming out of homelessness into housing. People donated furniture to my request and not to Bridging. Why? Because mine was going to a single person with a face, a name and a story that they could understand.

I also was surprised by the number of people who, when the donations fell through, asked for their donations back. I'm not saying they are greedy, my point is that they weren't going to give these things away in the first place. They were inspired by his story and chose to give away items that they intended to use themselves.

Some more incredible stories of generosity that inspired me in the past few weeks:

• A woman shared the story of having to escape an abusive situation early in her life. She was able to do so thanks to the generosity of complete strangers who supported her after she got to a safe place. She considered her donations as a way to pay back for the kindness shown to her years before.
• One person had thousands of Amazon points in her account. She used the points to buy a brand new, adorable bedding set for his daughter, new kitchen supplies, cleaning supplies, a hamper, and other items that people experiencing homelessness usually don't own. She was happy to be able to use the points to help someone else when she could have used them for her own family.
• Someone reached out to me after the donation drive had been going for a while to ask what was still missing. I had secured dining room chairs but not a table. She went to a local Goodwill, purchased a table for $50 and her husband refinished it for Chandan's apartment. The labor of love that went into this was so inspiring! When the donation fell through, they decided to keep the table and will use it as a card table in their basement. 
• One of the donors runs her own company staging houses for sale. She has a garage and basement filled with furniture, small appliances, household goods and other items that have never actually been used, just displayed and then put back in storage. It struck me how she owns nearly two households worth of goods while people in other areas of our city don't even have one. I'm not faulting her for her company or what she does, it's simply another example of the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots." 

When our house was remodeled in 2016 we made a significant donation to Bridging, getting rid of furniture that was perfectly good, just no longer needed. One of the workers who came to pick up the items said, "Wow, this stuff is in really good shape. This is better than the furniture we usually get."

People in my community put decent furniture like ours on the curb for solid waste pick-up every week, while people in other areas of this city would love to have that piece of furniture in their home, yet they don't have the transportation to retrieve it. For many of my friends and family, making a $100 donation to help someone out is no big deal, while for someone else, an extra $100 means they don't have to choose between rent or food that month. 

I've done a lot of learning about the history of Minneapolis, about how white people kept Blacks out of the desirable areas in Southwest Minneapolis using racial covenants and redlining practices and how BIPOC folks were given little choice but to live in what is now the notoriously poor North side. The disparity between the resources of North side and the wealth of the Southwest area is staggering. I have to believe that there is a way to make a direct connection between those with excess to give with those in need.

I'm not going to be fundraising for a single person again, but I will be reaching out to organizations working in the North side neighborhoods to see how I can help make connections to people in my area of the city. There's got to be a way we can do more to help people in my own city. 

"Trust" is a Big Word

I need to complete the final chapter of the story of assisting young Chandan White. Things did not turn out as expected. 

I had reached out to Chandan because I saw a young man in need, asking for help and not getting his needs met despite his multiple requests in the "Twin Cities Mutual Aid" group on Facebook. One of the challenges of our city and society is that we all live and work in segregated circles. People who have more than enough live among other people who have more than enough. People who need assistance live among people who need assistance. So when poor people cry out for help, the only people who hear them are other poor people.

I started a GoFundMe for Chandan with a goal of $5,000 and, through a generosity of spirit, people responded. Within a day the fundraiser was at $1,000, by the end of the week it was at $3,000. This was a far cry from the $5 and $10 Chandan had been receiving previously through the mutual aid network.

Those who donated began to ask what else Chandan may need...so I asked him. People had furniture to donate, did he need furniture? Did he need kitchen supplies? I asked and he said yes, he needed everything. 

I asked him to put together a list of what he needed but he didn't know where to start, which makes sense considering he's never had his own place before. Being a project manager and Excel geek, I put together a spreadsheet of what I thought he may need and ran it by him. I did not want to be a pushy donor, getting things for someone who doesn't need the items and is too polite to turn me down. I called myself a "meddling white woman" to him in a message and told him to tell me to back off if he needed me to. He "LOL'd." 

With the incredible generosity of my friends and community, I managed to get an entire apartment of furniture and supplies donated. The only thing missing was a sleeper sofa — the apartment was a studio and his bed had to also be his couch, and that's a purchase better made by the person who would be using it.

He and I arranged to meet at the apartment complex on April 1 at 11 a.m., move-in day. I coordinated with my sister Kristi and a neighborhood volunteer, we packed all the items into our three cars and drove to the apartment complex. 

No Chandan. And...when I inquired at the management office about helping Chandan moving in, she told me that they did not have someone by that name renting from them. They have a months-long wait list for people who have applied for housing, no one was moving in April 1 as no one had moved out.

Chandan and I had only ever communicated via messenger and other social media sites. I had reached out to him the day before to confirm that we were meeting him there, only to get a message that "this person is no longer available." It was suspicious, but we still showed up as he and I had agreed, only he wasn't there and there was clearly no apartment for him.

I was angry. Embarrassed. My heart actually hurt that day, a heaviness lay on my chest thinking that the entire story had been a scam. 

The three of us brought everything back to my house and stored it in the garage. I let it simmer a few days, hoping (but not hoping) that perhaps something had happened to him, that he would reach out to me eventually with a reason why things fell through.

Nothing.

Five days later, I informed the community that had generously made all of these donations what had happened and offered to return them or donate them to nonprofits where they would eventually go to those in need. I also encouraged people who donated to the GoFundMe — which at this point had raised $4,400 — to report the fundraiser and get their money back if they believed fraud had been committed. 

Finally, days after all the donations were being re-distributed and the fundraiser frozen, I heard from Chandan.

He told me that his phone had broke it took a few days to get a new one, and that he was waiting a week to hear back from the place to see if he was going to be able to move in there, and eventually was going to put a deposit down on a different place if it didn't work out. This was all via text. I asked to talk, and he called me.

I give him credit for calling me. 

When I look back at our many text conversations and think back to our discussion over a plate of French toast, I don't believe that his entire story is untrue. I think he is someone who doesn't understand how securing an apartment works, has no idea of the amount of work it takes to put together a household, and doesn't want to say "no" to a woman twice his age who wants to help. He told me he was able to buy a vehicle, which I was glad for, as that was a part of why we were raising money for him. If that's what he used the money for, then great, it will help him secure employment.

By the time he and I chatted I was over my anger and grief and had informed everyone involved of the outcome. I let him know that the fundraiser had been reported. I have no idea how much money he has withdrawn from it or how he's spent it. He thanked me for everything I did for him to help him get a car.

I was relating this entire experience to someone who works in the nonprofit world. I said that within the Mutual Aid Network, people gave to others in the hopes that their stories of need were true. It's one of the reasons why people only give $5 or $10, because if the need wasn't real then at least it was just a small amount. She said to me, "Trust is a big word."

And she's right. When we as donors give to a nonprofit, we have a base line of trust. To become a 501c3, paperwork must be filed, bylaws written and adhered to, and donor intent is the golden rule. I had taken a leap outside of the world of nonprofits and had gotten burned.

Clearly, I will no longer be fundraising directly for those in need, but giving to the organizations that exist to help them.

Courage and Hope

[ID: Painting of a solitary tree on a hill with the words "Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help, and brave enough to ask for it." Attributed to Mark Amend]

I am a member of a Facebook Group called 'Twin Cities Mutual Aid Network." It's made of over 2,000 members of people down on their luck, and other people who have the ability to help them. Most requests are for $20 for gas, $100 for a security deposit, $50 to help give a little girl a birthday party. Those who are able to donate typically give $5 or $10, a micro-donation amount, and when everyone pools their money these needs get met. 

The pandemic has been unequally unfair to low-income workers and to women, and it is primarily these people who make up the Facebook group, not people like me who are doing fine through all of this.

One of the challenges of this group is that those asking and those giving are going entirely on trust. Donors trust that those who are describing their situations are painting a real picture of what they need, and because there's no way to verify that, the donation amounts are small. The administrators do a good job of monitoring this — one person was kicked out of the group for asking for assistance for her kids but was using photos of her friends' kids to get help (she doesn't have children).

I noticed a man continuing to post throughout asking for assistance. First it was to help pay for repairs for his car, then his car got towed because it sat so long in one place, to money to pay for a hotel so he could have a place for him and his daughter, to money for a security deposit on an apartment. Each time, he never received quite enough to get by. 

He and I got connected via messenger and started chatting. He needed way more help them he was ever going to get in micro-donations. I asked if he would be willing to meet, to tell his story, so that I could rally to get him more meaningful support. He agreed.

We met at Fat Nat's Eggs in New Hope, close to his cousin's apartment where he was staying the night. I asked if he would entrust me with his story, so I could write about his situation and create a GoFundMe page for him. He agreed. You can read the story here, and make a donation if you'd like.

Some of the things he told me brought me back to Dr. Ibram Kendi's book, Stamped from the Beginning, which I read this past summer. 

When he was a senior in high school, he was accused of being involved in an incident that occurred at the school. Chandan was physically intimidated and interrogated by a police officer about his involvement in this incident, roughly pushed up against a wall with his hands forced behind him.  As Chandan points out, if the police had evidence they wouldn't have needed to intimidate him or attempt to get him to confess to something he hadn't been a part of. This is a 17-year-old boy — Chandan is a slight figure, tall and slim. Would a white teenager have been treated so roughly? Because of this incident he left school and never earned his high school degree. He was certain that the police were going to continue to harass him until they eventually charged him with something.

Now, during this pandemic, Chandan is looking for work. He had heard from an acquaintance that a hotel near him was hiring a slew of housekeeping positions because they anticipated that business would start to return soon. He and his friend, a woman, both put in their applications the same day. She was called the next day for an interview and hired on the spot. He was called the day after and interviewed. The hiring manager told him, "If I don't call you by the end of the week, please call me and I'll let you know." Chandan did as he asked and when he talked to the hiring manager on Friday of that week was informed that all the positions had been filled. The manager used this tactic to fill all the positions with people other than Chandan and then turn him down. I'm not sure if Chandan was being discriminated against because of his race or his gender, but once again, he didn't get what he needed.

He and I spoke of his hopes for the future and for his daughter, who is cute as a button. It takes great courage to ask for help and abundant hope that you'll receive it. I am hoping that Chandan gets the help that he needs through this endeavor.

The President We Needed

On Wednesday, November 9, 2016, I tearfully awoke my daughters to the news that the lead that Donald J. Trump had held the previous night never flipped, and he was elected president of the United States.

My sister-in-law in NYC made this observation: "He may not be the president we want, but he's the president we need." I didn't get it.

But over the course of what I can only describe as the most troubling four years of a president's administration, I have to admit she was right.

With one of their own in the highest office in the country, white supremacists came out of the woodwork, chanting "Jews will not replace us!" and re-igniting the flames of hatred that had been felt in their hearts but rarely spoken in the decades since the Civil Rights movement. Sadly, BIPOC people felt the wrath of this movement with even more dark-skinned bodies murdered at the hands of police, more violence inflicted upon them. Trump's rhetoric in calling Covid-19 the "Kung Fu flu" has resulted in a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans. He spoke the words — they are out there, and his followers responded enthusiastically with their actions. 

White Supremacists march in Charlotte, NC, 2017.

A protest on May 26, 2020, after the murder of George Floyd.

Now we can begin the work. 

We cannot change what we cannot see. Now we see the racism that lives in the hearts of many Americans. We see it plainly. It had simply gone underground, it never went away. Over the course of decades it was quietly written into our health care policies, our social welfare policies, our criminal justice system. 

Source: Sentencing Project (sentencingproject.org)

Source: MN Dept of Health Infant Mortality Study (pdf)

We would have never known the work we need to do with Hilary Clinton as president. But with Trump, now we see what needs to be done. We need to re-write health care policies, social welfare policies. We need to unravel our criminal justice system from the bottom up and re-build it. 

At a national level, at a state level even, the work seems daunting. What impact can I make to change the world we've built? I'm just one person.

My answer has been to start local. I became involved in social justice movements here in Minneapolis, showing up to support groups like Justice for Jamar Clark, Black Lives Matter, Native Lives Matter, Poor People's Campaign, and others. These are opportunities unique to me as a resident of Minneapolis, a city at the heart of the movement after the murder of George Floyd.

I recently joined the Racial Equity committee of the Fulton Neighborhood Association. I can learn how to address racist speech and ideas by educating myself on how to have a civil discussion with someone with whom I disagree. And I can support local and state candidates who put the needs of BIPOC communities first. Yes, first. Because they have been on the back-burner for so long, we need to prioritize writing policies and legislature that work as well for these communities as for White communities. Too much is currently in existence that not only does not support them but actively works against them. This fact sheet (pdf) from the Poor People's Campaign succinctly outlines the disparities in the state of Minnesota. 

If you are interested in doing this work yourself, here are some places to start:

1. Join the Braver Angels email list, read and learn. Braver Angels is working to de-polarize politics by teaching people how to disagree civilly. They host debates between people of opposing sides of an issue and moderate discussions using techniques to find common ground while still disagreeing. If you're a podcast listener, take a listen to their "Braver Angels" podcast. Start here, with their debate between Bob Woodson, veteran of the Civil Rights movement, and Hawk Newsome, co-founder of Black Lives Matter New York. 

2. Learn about the Black, queer, feminist lens. You can start by reading "Unapologetic" by Charlene A. Carruthers. Or, if you aren't going to read a whole book about it, read this interview. By evaluating a movement's work through the lens of a Black, queer, feminist person we can ensure that the work being done improves the life of anyone within that intersectionality.

3. Change happens at the local level, so look there for opportunities. What can you do to make your own neighborhood or city more welcoming to more people? Are there organizations or groups that are doing this work? What talents do you have that you can bring to the table? Or, if there aren't any groups doing this work, how about starting one?

4. Pay attention to local politics and institutions. Does your child's school have a policy supporting their BIPOC students? What steps are they taking to ensure equal treatment of a diverse student population, or...if the population is not diverse, what are they doing to expose students to the issues that face children of marginalized groups? How does your city government work? Is there adequate representation of populations? If not, can you support a candidate who supports BIPOC communities? Would you campaign for that candidate? 

Please join me in awakening our nation to the disparities that exist in our country. It takes more of us working at every level to make change. 

Anti-Racist in Training

Sign at the George Floyd Memorial, August 2020

I’ll begin with a parable by David Foster Wallace, as told in a commencement address in 2005:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

This allegory, first spoken by David Foster Wallace at a commencement address in 2005, was referring to the important realities that exist all around us that are the hardest to see and talk about, that in the seemingly mundane work of “adulting,” we are choosing to make our lives important…or not important.

I would like to use the allegory to make a different statement:

All Americans are racists.

Someone first said this to me earlier this year as I attended the first of many rallies and protests in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd. I was taken aback and asked this person for an explanation. His short explanation? “We’re all swimming in the water.”

Our government was built on a basis of racism. When the founding fathers wrote “All men are created equal” they didn’t take “men” to mean all human beings, they truly meant all White men — women were not included in this statement, nor were Blacks or Native Americans. Women were not considered intelligent or unemotional enough to know what was best for them. The second were considered property, not capable of managing their own lives or living without a master. The third, Native Americans, were not included as belonging to the country because it was their country we would slowly annex to create our own over the next 100 years.

All subsequent systems were built out of this belief that White men were at the top of a racial and gender hierarchy. The banking system, justice system, healthcare system, the wrestling of state rights vs federal rights, all of it. It is all around us; so much so that as a White woman walking through this world, I never saw it.

“Oh yes,” you say, “But we’ve come so far, that’s ancient history now!”

Is it really?

In 2018, Wells Fargo was fined $3 billion for opening false accounts on behalf of its customers, taking out credit in their names falsely to “boost” reported earnings. While that was the action they were fined for, multiple cities across the United States have also sued Wells Fargo repeatedly for predatory lending practices, stating that Wells Fargo pushes BIPOC borrowers to take out riskier or more expensive loans than they should, costing many of them homeownership opportunities. Just this year the Trump administration stripped the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity of their enforcement actions, making them impotent. Moving forward, if someone believes a bank is not being fair to them on the basis of gender, race, religion or other status, there is no longer an office with any power that can help them. 

Today, the United States comprises 5% of the global population but 25% of the world’s incarcerated population. Why is that? Do we really have that many criminals here in the “land of the free?” Do you know the difference between a White and a Black drug addict? A White drug addict goes to treatment — a Black drug addict goes to jail. When those White addicts end their treatment, they mostly go back about their lives, to their jobs, families and communities, while the Blacks who serve their sentence have lost some if not all of those things while they were away, and have lost the right to vote for their rest of their lives (in most states).

In 2018, when 65% of Florida voters emphatically voted “yes” to restore voting rights to convicted felons who had served their time, 33% of adult Black men seemingly had their voices restored to them. I say “seemingly” because even now, in 2020, the roll-out of this law has been stymied by a new wrinkle that now states that those felons must pay all fees and fines related to their convictions. The voice of the poor Black man is not yet being heard.  

In the United States, a Black baby is twice as likely to die by its first birthday as a White baby. Research published in 2018 determined that the reason for this gap isn’t the unhealthy behavior of Black mothers, which has been considered the underlying cause for 30 years. Instead, it points to the gap in access to healthcare for Black and White mothers, institutional racism and the increased stress that Black mothers suffer living in a racist society.

We are swimming in the water. And suddenly I see it all around me.

As Angela Davis says in Ava DuVernay’s stunning documentary, 13^th, “It is not enough to be a non-racist. We must become actively anti-racist.”

I am working on becoming anti-racist. It is not enough to quietly walk through this world, accepting my guaranteed freedom while they are being denied to others in my own country.

I am starting where I believe I can make the most difference — here in my own city. I am taking my lead from the voices of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities who have been telling us for years what they need to be safe, to feel the same security I feel as I move about this world. In their neighborhoods the police are a menace, harassing them and brutalizing them for decades, robbing many of their freedoms for low-level crimes that lawmakers wrote years ago for misleading purposes.

I no longer want to live in two Americas, one built for people who look like me and one built for those who don’t. I hope you’ll join me in this change.

Just a Regular Day of Nursing...On A Day Off

Kristi on her birthday breakfast, after finishing another night shift of nursing.

My sister is a nurse. She's pretty damn amazing, and cares for people as part of and outside of her job.

One summer day she was biking back to her apartment from our place. Near her building is a bus stop where bus drivers often park their buses and take a break at the convenience store on the corner.

While a bus was sitting there and the bus driver was inside, Kristi noticed a woman sitting on the corner, her legs splayed into the street. She seemed kind of disoriented and was swaying back and forth. Kristi was concerned she was going to fall forward into the street.

Kristi could have just crossed the street on the opposite side and pedaled on her way. Being a nurse, she stopped.

She spoke with this woman for a bit. The woman was slurring her words, unsure of where she was, wasn't even sure of her name. As they spoke, Kristi noticed that she had a medical tag around her neck and she looked at it. The woman had diabetes, and Kristi immediately associated the woman's odd behavior with low blood sugar.

By this time, the bus driver had come out of the store and was going to start his route again; Kristi asked him to call an ambulance. He went back into the convenience store and guess who he called? His manager. Yep, because a metro transit manager can definitely help someone in a medical emergency! The driver came out and talked with Kristi, told her that this woman rides their bus all the time, they often see her, but they've never seen her like this.

Finally an ambulance arrived, and they began to care for this woman. Kristi stuck around to make sure she'd be all right, and the EMTs told her that the woman's blood sugar was 11. I wasn't sure what that meant, but Kristi said that's near comatose; she shouldn't have been conscious. (Normal blood sugar is between 70-130 when fasting, higher after meals.)

They loaded the woman up in the ambulance and drove off, sirens blaring, to get her the medical attention she needed. Kristi biked the rest of the way home and chalked it up to another day.

Later, when Kristi related this story to me, I was amazed. "Do you realize that you probably saved that woman's life?" I said.

"No, not really," Kristi demurred. "Someone would have stopped."

"No, I don't think so. I think people would assume she was an alcoholic, drunk in the middle of the day. No one would have called an ambulance. Even when you asked someone to call an ambulance, they didn't do it right away. If they did anything they'd probably call the cops to get her out of the street."

After a while, Kristi finally agreed that yes, perhaps, she had saved that woman's life. But, she said, "That's my job."

This story has stuck with me even though it happened last summer, or possibly even the summer before. It's because people like Kristi are in the world, people with goodness in their hearts and a willingness to step into uncertain situations, that I have hope for a better tomorrow for all of us.

Who Do You Trust?

I've been carefully watching the case between the U.S. government and Apple and the San Bernadino iPhone.

In case you haven't kept up: The FBI has asked Apple to create a software "back door" into the iPhone used by one of the bombers involved in the San Bernadino terrorist attack. The FBI states that there is no other way to unlock the data within that phone besides having Apple compromise the security of every iPhone that's been produced.

Don't believe me? That's what it comes down to. Create a master key and it unlocks every door. Even though the FBI assures Apple (and thus assures us) that this master key will only be used to unlock this one phone, it all comes down to this:

Who do you, a member of the public, trust more, the U.S. government, or Apple?

The answer to that question is obvious to me: I trust Apple. They have a vested interest in the security of all the phones they've produced, phones that millions of us rely on for our only phone line, our email access, our connection to the world.

I've polled a few people with that very question; which do you trust more? The answer in every case has been Apple.

What a sad statement on the state of our governing body that we would trust a for-profit corporation before we trust our own government. Between the economic downturn, the big bank bailout, the current election shenanigans and the ever growing gap between the have's and the have not's, it's no wonder we'd trust Apple over our government.

Yet another sign that government by the people, for the people, is not working.

What Hasn't Changed

This week's cover of Time Magazine struck me.

I don't believe that the civil rights leaders of the 1960's would have imagined seeing scenes like this 50 years after their own struggle lead to what they believed to be true change.

I do not pretend to understand what it means to be oppressed in our society. I can tell you what it means to be misunderstood.

I went to college at St. Cloud State in St. Cloud, Minnesota. At the time the nickname for this city of 50,000 was "White Cloud." I can't speak to the racial make up of the city itself, but I can tell you that the campus was around 85% Caucasian, 10% international students and 5% African American. Racial tensions were high -- I am not sure why it was more of a powderhorn than anywhere else, but it was. Maybe it was the lack of diversity, but at the time the racial make up didn't look much different than most other cities of comparable size in Minnesota, and other cities didn't seem to have the problems St. Cloud had.

There was the case of the white student beaten by two black students to within an inch of his life. Another incident outside a bar resulted in the opposite result. And then there was the case of the black male student charged with raping a white female student.

That one shook up campus for some time, because sadly there was the typical argument as to whether it was rape or consensual sex. I honestly do not remember the outcome of the trial, but I remember the media coverage and the unsettled feeling on campus while it was going on.

During this time, I lived in an apartment house several blocks off campus. While campus itself was well-lit, city streets the lights were few and far between and the alleys seemed ominous. At least that's how it felt to walk those streets by myself, a white woman, coming home from the campus library at midnight. (And yes, I really did -- I worked the late shift, closed it down at midnight and walked home after.)

One evening, I was walking home from the library and following the advice of all those tips and tricks that had been published in the school paper about safety.

• Be aware of your surroundings. 
• Walk confidently, looking in front of and around you, not at the ground. 
• Walk closer to the street side of the sidewalk, so someone can't grab you from the alley.
• If someone grabs you, yell something specific for others to do, like "Call 911!" instead of just "Help!" 

My spine stiffened when I saw a figure approaching me. The person was backlit by the street light behind him so I couldn't see his face, but I could clearly tell it was a man -- tall, broad-shouldered. The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up and my shoulders tensed. Would he grab me? Would he try to drag me down an alley? The honest, terrible truth of it is that I thought, "What if he's black?" because I thought that would increase my chances of being attacked.

We walked closer to each other, and I could see the tension in his shoulders as well. Was he about to make his move? Was I about to have my life go in a direction I never intended?

We finally got close enough to see each other. He was a black man, a student I assume, with a backpack stuffed with his studies, papers spilling out of hastily closed zippers, a book under his arm.

We looked each other in the eye, quickly nodded, looked down and kept walking our separate ways.

I realized as I passed him...he was just as scared of I as I was of him.

After all, it was only he and I on this street. I could scream, trip myself to provide bruises for the police and claim that he did it. The state of race relations on campus at that time meant that I would be believed and he would not.

Perhaps he had the same thought that I had when we passed, "Is she about to make her move? Is my life about to go in a direction I never intended?"

For a moment, I understood. We are all human beings. We all have fears. We are all individuals -- our race is not responsible for an individual's actions.