In a Coffee Shop Again

February 2018

“So Fresh, So Clean” blares from the speakers and I glance around at the people surrounding me and wonder, do they even understand the cultural import of Outkast? The two men at the table to my left converse about a mutual acquaintance. “Wesley’s a nice guy, but he’s a racist dickhead, and he doesn’t even know it.” As the conversation continues, the man speaking says that he’s glad he’s a white guy because he knows that life would be hard if he wasn’t. He goes on to talk about the KKK and how back in his grandmother’s day, they didn’t just hate Black people; they hated Catholics, too. His grandmother was Catholic.

As the song ends and another beat undoubtedly created by a Black artist permeates the chatter, their conversation becomes inaudible, and I glance at the group of men in front of me. There are about eight of them. They’re all wearing dress pants and button downs with ties. Two of the men at the table look young, like they might be just out of college, pulled into the corporate world or a law firm by their dads or good connections or white male privilege.

The others look middle aged, like they are the dads or the good connections or the passers of white male privilege. They all sit around the table merrily drinking craft beer, engaging in different conversations with one another. A middle-aged woman in business attire arrives later and joins the group. With her sunglasses on top of her head and grapefruit-colored drink in hand, she pulls up a chair and joins in the camaraderie. There is no doubt that she belongs there.

I came in a little after 2 in the afternoon to finish up my work for the week and update my resume, hoping that the gradual lull of mild inebriation would help me feel less worthless than all the other times I’ve tried updating my resume. I made a few work calls, but I gave up after about an hour of realizing that it’s a late Friday afternoon, and people probably don’t want to talk to me today just as much as I don’t want to talk to them.

The man sitting to my right and sharing a table with me when I came in looked young. I wondered what his work was. I always wonder what people’s work is when I see them in this coffee shop on their laptops and drinking beer in the middle of the day, as if I, too, am not doing the same thing. What a privilege. I come a few times a week. It’s usually pretty quiet before 3 pm, so I always find myself amused when I stay later than 4, especially on a Thursday or Friday, and look up to realize that I’m among a crowd of white people drinking beer and living their white lives and discussing their white concerns. Loudly.

I remember the last time I stayed after 4 on a Friday evening. There was a man at a table to my right. An older man joined him and laid cash on the table. The younger man, presumably the lawyer, made a cheers to what they came to the coffee shop to discuss— non-consensual sex with someone who was incapacitated. I wondered if bemusement and disgust shown on my face as I tried to focus on the screen in front of me and not make it obvious that I was dipping in and out of their conversation.

Now, the men to my left are talking about Obama. “He was a neoliberal. He bombed more people in more countries. . . but he was a better neoliberal than most. I’ll give him that.” That’s all I heard before the rhythmic music coming from the speakers, combined with my own inner monologue, took over again. A few of the men from the table in front of me have left now. There’s only one young man left, along with the older woman and older men. They’re lawyers. I just heard the woman say something about trying cases.

There are two women at the table to my right. They’ve been here since before it became crowded and loud. I wonder if they feel as puzzled or distracted as I do, or if the realities they live in allow them to focus on their laptop screens rather than marveling at a glimpse into this peculiar comfort.

I’ve been reflecting on white people in coffee shops for quite some time now. Months ago, I found myself appalled at old white men rejoicing in the triumph of Trump while I tried burying my face in a copy of Are Prisons Obsolete? Years ago, I felt annoyed by the number of white people just sitting and staring at their phones and tablets in the middle of the day at a Starbucks in Mt. Pleasant, while I toiled over mounds of scholarly articles and book chapters for classes teaching me all the ways that white supremacy and patriarchy have been and continue to be destructive. Didn’t they have jobs they needed to go do?

It’s always a moment of minding other people’s business and almost always a moment of defiance. It’s an inner satisfaction at the mere possibility that my Black presence might be a tiny moment of disruption to their white lives. It’s amusement and curiosity at the irrationality and fickleness of whiteness as a construct. And seeing it in a real time almost always sends my wheels turning. It’s not as if I haven’t been surrounded by whiteness from preschool to college to working adulthood, but as the years have passed, more knowledge and experience have been gained. And so whiteness has been cast in many different lights for me.

I am now at a point where it is mostly laughable because it is so absurd, and so the absurdity keeps being reflected back to me because I continue to judge it. Why would I bring these experiences into my reality? What are they trying to show me? Can I not just see people in coffee shops without having to reflect on the fact that they are people who are white? It goes without saying that the concern with whiteness is inextricably linked to my Blackness, and I think that I face a certain paradox when I consider my quickness to judge whiteness as a construct, especially as a fickle construct.

What does it mean to believe that whiteness is not real while centering Blackness in all of my experiences? I mean, after all, I did not become Black until whiteness decided that I was. And yet, my Blackness informs so much of my lived experience that it cannot be ignored. By that same logic, I find all of my identities to be paradoxes. I know that they are not real, in the sense that they are all sociopolitical constructs.

What is real is that I am a spirit having a human experience. Yet, the constructs are what inform my particular human experience and have led to spiritual awakening. They continue to inform my spiritual journey. I can say with absolute certainty that many of the spiritual concepts I encounter come by way of exploring and studying my identities and how they are interrelated.

However, I am beginning to see the ways that filtering my existence through my identities can limit my capacity for empathy and compassion. How can I reconcile the belief that we are spirits having human experiences with my judgment of white people in coffee shops? To acknowledge that they are spirits is to recognize that we are the same. Yet, the inner satisfaction of my Blackness disrupting their whiteness, if even for a fraction of their day in a tiny fraction of their lives, seems contrary to wanting to alleviate their suffering.

And here, there is another paradox for me. Our sufferings are inextricably linked because whiteness is destructive, and destruction is not discriminatory. Purveyors of whiteness suffer for their privilege, while I have suffered for the harm that their belief has caused. To find satisfaction in their possible discomfort because of my mere presence, is that not to find satisfaction in my own suffering? Can it, then, even really be called satisfaction?

It is said that in New Earth, we have upgraded from dichotomies to a both/and paradigm. I can occupy both this space and that space at the same time. So perhaps it is possible to recognize both the spirit and the human experience that is happening through the identities, not just in myself, but in people who have privileges that sustain these ideas of inequality and separation. I say this acknowledging that I, too, occupy certain privileged spaces. Perhaps I have the capacity to both desire their freedom from unsustainable structures and feel satisfaction at watching their discomfort as the structures crumble. After all, both feelings have the same end, so are they really incompatible?