The kid in the Javelin was more circumspect than many of the other students I knew that the school. He doubted the existence of a loving God, for instance, and eschewed membership in any of the rigid cliques among the students. I looked up to him, as he seemed so free compared to me and many of my classmates.
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Having been a sensitive, empathetic boy, I was prone to all sorts of daydreams and flights of mind and spirit. At grade school and high school, I was clumsy, half-hearted in athletic pursuit, and didn’t have a great deal of rapport with the other kids in my neighborhood, who could be cruel and vindictive.
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Around the time of the Cub Scout incident in Blenheim Park, a boy by the name of Raymond began to attend my grade school. As I remember him, Raymond was a tall, stout kid whose bubbly personality endeared him to teachers and students alike. He carried an afro pick in his back pocket.
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As I deliver mail day to day, I think about American active and structural racism. It’s hard not to, given my past in the soup pot. My route runs through a suburban neighborhood activated and motivated by race. Except for one Black American woman and an African immigrant married to a white man, there are no Blacks or Black Americans on my daily rounds.
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Race dominates the American mind. Even when we aren’t thinking about it, we are living every day in a steeply racialized nation. Not to think about race in America is the privilege of someone who lives and moves in the majority. I argue that, in this way, we are thinking about it even when we are not.
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