by Ian Williams
On my way home, I see Daisy man again. He’s pulling his cart, guitar on his back, heading to a makeshift tent city on King Street. I am holding real daisies; his are artificial, but bigger and livelier than mine. They chatter spontaneously with the world.
Sat Nov 14
I walk to High Park. I encounter so many Black people that I lose count, so many I lose myself. My eyes overflow with honey. So many I forget to count, so many I forget myself.
Sun Nov 15
Queen Street, late night walk with Chiayi, strong winds. The street is generally deserted. An empty streetcar scrapes by. I see a drunk white-coded woman approaching and I know it’s going to be bad from the look she gives me, then us, then me. I think she’s going to vomit. I move to the edge of the sidewalk. She leans toward us, trying to block us as we pass.
Buffet, she says to us apparently, which is how my phone auto-corrects N.
Seeing no reaction, she leans closer and goes for something worse.
Nighter jello, she says, according to the auto-corrected version.
The first word is for me and the second for Chiayi.
We take a side street and head back to the empty condo. I am sorry Chiayi had to see that, but also glad that she sees what random, unprovoked racism looks like from my point of view.
We were having a good day.
Mon Nov 16
I start noticing white people.
I notice the white woman who inches forward into the pedestrian zone in her crossover vehicle. When she sees me about to cross, she inches her way into my space and turns the corner.
THE ONLY
THE LOOK
My grandmother told us, Don’t look white people in the eye. I’m not sure where she picked up this advice, but the imperative phrasing makes me think that the consequences of such a transgression would be severe. Not far from her house, on the way to the beach, remain vestiges of slavery: the cocoa house, yellow cocoa groves, great houses, and, in the de-colonial period afterward, a house that still bears the name of the white man who owned most of the land.
In elementary school in Canada, we were taught to look people in the eye when we spoke to them. In Trinidad, eye contact is softer, deferential. To avoid someone’s eye is a kindness that allows them to look freely. I don’t much like eye contact. All the power dynamics, aggression, and confidence of people who make an effort to hold your eye—blegh. As recently as my thirties, I’ve been called autistic—meant as an insult—for this preference, without any consideration of cultural factors at work. Why the armchair diagnosis, though? I just don’t want to be looked at.
* * *
—
One can’t talk about constantly being the only Black person in a room without talking about being looked at. Being the Only means being conspicuous.
* * *
—
In one of my workshop classes, I invite students to introduce themselves without words. The exercise is based on a conceptual piece by Marina Abramović, The Artist Is Present. We sit in two rows, knees almost touching, facing each other for one minute before shifting down the row to the next face.
The first few seconds are skittish. Students try to control their smiles, they adjust their clothing, they straighten their posture, they adjust their gaze to a benign frequency. Eventually, their faces settle into a resting state. A gong sounds internally as they recognize that they are both looking and being looked at, and that how they look at others conveys information about who they think they are. Pronominal confusion intended. Are we not always introducing ourselves in this reverberating way?
I then ask them to write the first poem of the semester: “To See and Be Seen.”
Every time I do this exercise, I think of a moment in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales where the Wife of Bath positions herself to see and also be seen by “lusty folk.” Medieval optics, itself a restatement of ancient Greek optics, professed that the act of seeing involved emitting a ray from your eye, capturing a small impression of the object or person, and bringing it back to your eye. We can still hear remnants of this thinking in capture an image or feast your eyes.
That’s fine and good if you’re the one seeing. Being seen, however, can feel like being consumed. It’s not easy being looked at. Women and racialized people understand this keenly. We recognize the invasiveness of eyes before we hear terms such as the male gaze and scopophilia or encounter Foucault’s panopticon. White men look, everyone else is looked at.
In university, coming to an awareness of new terms, I wanted to ask two very personal questions: How can I avoid the inevitability of being looked at when I am the only one of my kind in every situation? And if I must be viewed, then how can I be viewed as everyone else is viewed? But these questions had no relevance to other people in the class.
* * *
—
Time for a commercial break.
It begins with an overhead shot of a Black man opening his eyes in bed. The rest of the commercial records the looks he receives as he goes about his day. Sometimes it’s shot from his point of view so the looks are directed at us, the viewers. An elevator of white people closes on him/us/you. At a diner, a white couple chooses not to sit in his/our/your area. At a pool, white kids exit as he teaches his son how to float. At an upscale store, salespeople exchange looks when he strolls through. The looks have various nuances—disgust, worry, condescension—but as a cluster, I’d describe them as degrees of concern.
At the end of the commercial, the man enters a courtroom. Everyone stands. Turns out he’s a judge. The moral: shame on everyone in the commercial. Shame on the viewer too, for being mildly surprised that the Black man has such a good job. Shame, on all y’all. Shame, shame, shame.
Many of the comments on YouTube are from posters who found the commercial moving. A few viewers thought Procter & Gamble missed the mark, that a Black man should not have to be extraordinary, a judge, to be looked at with respect. Fair point.
I recognize the Look he receives because I see it a lot, almost daily. However, when I’m with white people, the Look is negligible, maybe even invisible, to them. I read the Look as racialized; they read it as neutral, as looking rather than a look, as a fellow human scanning their environment. These white people are not insensitive to nuance. If there’s something flirtatious or sexual in a look, they pick up on it. So I wonder whether they actually do not see the racialized Look or whether they are denying it in order to avoid a pending race conversation they see as unnecessary. A long, awkward conversation after a quick look.
* * *
—
I’m thinking about my grandmother’s advice again. Perhaps she gave it not in order to pay deference to white people but because she was trying to shield us from being objectified, from measuring ourselves through the looks of white people.
If the world keeps looking at you in these minimizing ways, communicating with you non-verbally (famous stat: 70 to 93 percent of communication is non-verbal), one of three things happens.
Either A) you come to view yourself similarly, which begets self-loathing.
B) You confront the viewer: What’s your problem? This option gets exhausting. It produces more bad looks, because once you go verbal, you become the aggressor.
Or C) You look away. But you die inside. Your courage shrivels. At best, you retreat into the imagination.
None of these are great options or universally appropriate to every situation. I’ve mostly done the third with strangers. I can’t stop the looks. The only way I can stop the looks is by not looking myself.
AT SCHOOL
In high school, there were two Black tables in the corner of the cafeteria, near the canteen. You didn’t sit there unless you were Black, and even if you were, you didn’t sit there unless you were invited. The tables were largely ignored but generally the most fun tables in the cafeteria.
I reco
gnized people at the Black tables because there were so few Black people at that school. It was an arts high school in a town called Caledon, which is on the outskirts of Brampton, which is on the outskirts of Toronto. Because the school was in a rural location and admission was by audition, which may have been a gatekeeping mechanism, the student body was very, very white; this deterred many Black folks from attending the school.
I was the only Black guy in the group I hung around with. I did not eat lunch at the Black tables. My friends still asked me about the tables, as if I had special psychic insight into the conversations there. White folks get curious or downright concerned when Black folks congregate. Truth is, I was also curious about what happened there. Imagine a group of Black artsy kids at two alienated tables in a sea of white cafeteria noise, and me, a Black teenager separate from them, like a diasporic island from Africa.
Did I want to join? Did I view them as a kind of ghetto? Did I want to row my raft to their country? No visa arrived, I could say. No application was made, they could say.
However you look at it, I was the Only. The only Black in my friend group. One of the only Blacks in Visual Arts in my grade (I should consult my yearbooks). There was one girl in the grade below me, who left after a year and went to a more diverse school. In almost every one of my classes in high school, I was the only Black kid. In university, I was the only Black kid in my English classes. Every single English course. In big lecture courses for psych or science, I’d sometimes encounter my friend from church and maybe one or two other Black people, whose attendance we both tracked throughout the semester.
I can keep going. I have been the only Black person on a train, the only one in an audience, the only one in a hallway of offices, the only one in countless rooms. Here’s yet another way that race structures our lives: the cost of choosing a path that leads you through elite schools and respected jobs is lifelong alienation. You become a kind of Black person who is kind of Black.
Being the Only can be branded as an achievement, as exceptionalism (in both senses), as an example to the race, as a condemnation of others in the race, as a data point. But the experience of being the Only is felt mostly as loneliness.
Exceptionalism and achievement are linked in the minds of Black and white people alike. With that achievement comes responsibility. Du Bois believes the Talented Tenth of Black people would “guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst.” Being the Only is often reflected back to you as if it were a privilege for Black people merely to be in the presence of white people.
The whiter the environment, the more you’ve achieved. Said differently, the fewer Black people in that environment, the more you’ve achieved. Sometimes the Only coincides with being the First. The First is slippery because it slides from marking you as the first Black person in time to gain admission, say, to the first in position. The best.
* * *
—
So I was the Only in my class. What do I want? A medal? Pity? Why is it important not to be alone in a lecture hall? Was anyone jeering at me? Wasn’t everyone there to learn? These are white questions.
If you’re white, reverse the situation: imagine yourself as the only white person in a teeming cafeteria of Black people, all with their various temperaments, subjectivities, energies, not just for one meal but for four years of lunches. Now imagine two white tables in the corner. Most white people would join. I reckon most white people (or their parents) wouldn’t stay in that situation.
The very endurance and patience of Black people in outlier situations, conspicuous and marginal as a means to an end, sure, but also as a reality of our day-to-day existence, means that we are not short-sighted or quick-tempered or violent, as popular stereotype would hold. Quite the opposite. We are long-suffering.
* * *
—
Earlier, I mentioned the scholar Christina Sharpe, who describes anti-Black racism as weather, as the atmosphere we live in. I think about it in similarly environmental terms. Racism is like radiation: sometimes it is low-grade like cellphone signals, sometimes intense like a nuclear explosion. Whatever the degree, its effects accumulate. It’s not an environment that harms Black people alone. White people can be radioactive.
* * *
—
I’m looking at my high school yearbooks and my university graduation class photo to see if Black people were, in fact, as rare as I recall.
AT WORK
Auntie Verna worked as a nurse in England for most of my childhood. In the eighties, she was part of a team that delivered a premature baby so small she fit in her father’s palm. The event was commemorated in a British newspaper, and my mother saved the clipping in the album alongside photographs of Auntie Verna walking through snow, Auntie Verna in a fur coat, Auntie Verna with her hair pulled back into a bun.
Our family had the usual fascination with the clipping. There was pride in her achievement and its recognition. To be in the newspaper, in print, was a big deal. But the article also caused gentle head shaking. We found the headline amusing: THANKS A BUNDLE, GIRLS! And we found the photograph bemusing. Here was Auntie Verna, the only Black nurse in the photograph, shoulder to shoulder with three white nurses and the baby’s mother. She is looking at the white baby in front of her with the most reserved smile of all the nurses. If I cover the smiles with my thumb and look into the eyes of everyone, I sense all sorts of dynamics behind the scenes. Auntie Verna’s Trinidadian relatives admitted pride in her accomplishment. They could even admit a parallel pride in the fact that she was in the newspaper. But below that was an unspeakable pride that Auntie Verna was surrounded by white people.
* * *
—
In all the places I’ve taught over the last fifteen years, I’ve only had three Black colleagues in my department. Okay, one was not in my department, but our offices were on the same floor. So, two. And one was precariously employed as a sessional. So, in all the places I’ve taught, I’ve only had one tenure-stream Black colleague in my department.
It was a job that I wasn’t on track to get. I went on the market ABD (that is, all-but-dissertation), sent out fifty applications, each requiring an assortment of materials and follow-up diversity forms. I made it to a couple of long lists and had a whopping one interview. Back then, the annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA) was where universities interviewed candidates before selecting a short list to invite to campus. It was an elimination round. The bathrooms and hallways bristled with black-suited PhDs, all in competition, mumbling dissertation synopses to themselves. Everybody’s dissertation was problematizing something or other. A friend’s toenails fell off from the stress.
Early in my interview, which took place on a hotel bed in Philadelphia, I knew I wasn’t going to get the job. At first sight, I was not the candidate they were looking for. I could tell from the polite procedural efficiency of the interviewers that they were not really listening to me. They looked at their papers. They waited for me to finish. We shook hands.
They said: Thank you for your time.
They couldn’t say: This was a waste of time.
They would never say: You are not what we’re looking for, Black man.
But I still needed a job. So I went down to the large convention room to look at open postings. The room was like the Walmart of academia. Rows and rows of universities, interviewing candidates at folding tables. I decided to browse along the aisles since I was already wearing my suit and had my materials on me. Most schools were in the middle of interviews. I saw a Black man and a white woman with no candidate in front of them. I recognized the name of the university. I had applied there, I told them, but I didn’t get a call back.
The Black man said, You’re here now.
The white woman said, What’s your name?
And the Black man said, Tell us about yourself.
Emotionally, it was like a
sea of ice breaking up. I gave them my CV. We talked right there and then. Every time someone approached the table, I looked over my shoulder and prepared to leave. They assured me that I was not taking someone else’s time. I was who they wanted to speak to right now. And yet they were clear that they had other candidates to meet and were constrained by certain hiring protocols, meaning I should not hope unreasonably. They thanked me when we were done.
About a month later, I got invited for a campus visit, then some time after that I was offered one of two jobs in their department. I don’t know what kind of advocacy happened behind the scenes because of these two people. Did I get that job because a Black man was on the committee? That’s a question that white people ask when they feel disadvantaged. It strips Black people of our qualifications by surrendering us to the favours of Black people or the benevolence of white people. I was qualified. I could do the job as well as other candidates. I did it. I can point to my record. But in competitive processes, I must do the pre-work of Blackness that white people don’t need to do, which is the work of persuasion that I am in fact a contender. That work takes the form of being articulate and personable, of being smart, of letting white people know that they are seen, that they matter. And then there’s a click inside the white person, a lock unlocking from the other side, and the door opens enough that they can see me and we can finally get down to business. With the Black man, I didn’t need to dance on the other side of the door before he opened it.