Merging
By Caleb Bouchard
Aubrie and I are nudging eighty miles per hour on I-16 West when she pauses the audiobook we’ve been listening to and asks, “Do you believe in reparations?”
I consider the question before answering. We whip by sooty freight trucks and orange road work signs on our way back from a weekend vacation in Savannah.
“In a way, yes,” I say. “I’m all for institutional reparations. More funding to HBCUs, libraries and infrastructure in black communities, better healthcare, stuff like that. And buying from black businesses, too. But I don’t know about sending a check out to every African-American.” After a beat of silence, I add, “Is that racist of me to say?”
My girlfriend, a Samoan-American, shrugs. “Did I tell you about this friend I have? A journalism major.” She goes on to tell me about this woman’s Facebook posts that call out the response of white folx in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. For decades, hundreds of African-Americans have died unjustly and brutality in the hands of the police. Where were the white voices and the white outrage after the killings of Amaud Arbery, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, and so many others? Some of us have been radical long before white folx came along, the journalism major, a black woman, asserted. Y’all are in it for the clout. Just shut up and listen for once.
In the wake of George Floyd, peppered in with the posts sharing anti-racism resources and rally information, I’ve stumbled upon videos of white women (@influencersinthewild, one Instagram account dubs them) holding up BLACK LIVES MATTER signs at a significant distance from the heart of the protests, or posing in front of a looted stores, their chino-wearing boyfriends always snapping the photo.
Seeing this, my cynical side can’t help but wonder about the ratio between sincere, substantial activism and branding — or plain old virtue signaling. To take my cynicism further: are there white people out there who salivate at the prospect of another BLM photo-op in the wake of another black person killed by police? Well, yes. We’ve already seen it.
If y’all really want to help us, reparations would be a great start.
“Underneath that, she put a link to her Cash App,” Aubrie recounts the closing of the Facebook post. “She wanted her white friends to give her reparations directly.”
“Oof. That’s something else.”
“Yeah.”
We let that sit for a bit. Reparations are an uncomfortable topic, but somehow fitting to our road trip listening, Kiese Lamon’s Heavy: An American Memoir. We are at the part where Kiese is in graduate school and working to lose weight for the first time in his life. I’m not sure what it is about this moment that reminds Aubrie of reparations. Memory is a mysterious thing.
“The sad thing,” I say, the audiobook still paused, “is that I can see some white people donating ten or twenty bucks, dusting off their hands, then saying ‘Great! I fixed racism.’ A lot of people felt the same way about voting for Obama in ‘08. ‘Hey, don’t look at me, I voted for the black guy — I can’t be racist.’ We’re always looking for an easy fix to complex problems.”
I begin to feel myself puff up from my woke words, until I remember the two James Baldwin books in my suitcase, acquired in Savannah from white-owned bookstores. If I truly put my money where my mouth is, shouldn’t I have pushed back on my consumerist urges and purchased the books from a black-owned bookstore, like I just professed? Perhaps true wokeness begins with the realization that, as a straight white guy, I will never be the wokest person in the room. In fact, when it comes to the fight against racism, there are more pressing actions that need to be taken beyond quoting from The Fire Next Time.
I switch lanes, passing by a slow sedan. After days of heavy rain and its muggy aftermath, the sky is clear blue, and the sunlight seems everlasting. As I push ninety, I immediately beg off, taking my foot off the gas. My thoughts stumble back to January 2017, when I rear-ended a Porsche on I-75 in downtown Atlanta. The Porsche would be fine after repairs, but I totaled my tiny Ford Focus.
It was one of the more monumental fuck-ups of my life.
While waiting for the police to arrive, I got the idea that I was about to be arrested and thrown in jail. Look at their bumper! I told my friend Ripley, who had been riding with me. Look at all these pissed off drivers! I was frantic with fear and paranoia, on the verge of hyperventilating. Ripley hugged me and said that everything would be okay. And it was. The officer handed me a ticket for following too closely and went about his day.
At my court date, I filled out the necessary paperwork and stood before the judge. I pled no contest, and was immediately directed to a cashier to pay the fine. In light of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks, I wonder if a black woman or man in my situation would have had the privilege to stand before a judge at all, or if they would have faced an unjust death before they were even served a citation.
Memory is a mysterious thing.
“Your friend is right about something,” I say, merging back into the right lane. “White folks need to shut up and listen.”
As I say this, a passage from Heavy resonates in my mind: “I learned you haven't read anything if you've only read something once or twice. Reading things more than twice was the reader's version of revision.”
I think back to my initial response to Aubrie’s question on reparations, and although it still feels balanced and fair to me, I realize I’ve hardly read the issue more than once.
After a short discussion about what we’ll do for dinner tonight, Aubrie presses play on Heavy. I focus my eyes on the road ahead. In the fast-approaching distance, two cars poke along in the right lane, one in the left. I turn on my blinker and get ready to merge.
