Check, Please
My husband and I are sitting in our favorite cafe on a leisurely Wednesday night, in a classy/funky spot that straddles the Westside and Pico/Fairfax. We're here to celebrate our anniversary, as we've done the last seven years; the excellent café is part flower shop, and both the food and flora figured prominently in our courtship, wedding and pretty much every special occasion since then. We're friends with the owners, a hardworking husband and wife who immigrated from Central America, in more than just a business way: we trade details about our lives, our hopes, even our pets. And we discuss politics. We've done that with increasing intensity the last couple of election cycles (my husband married in 2000 just before the presidential election of that year), though we've managed to stay on the same page--the government is not on the side of the people, voters need to get off their complacent butts, America is losing its standing in the world, etc. No serious disagreements, or even disagreements, at all. Until recently, with less than a week to go before this election. In hindsight, that was exactly the time when any personal or political differences we might have avoided the last eight years, which we spent decrying Bush, would come to the surface. But last week it took me wholly by surprise.
The wife, who I'll call Matilda, had taken our order and lingered at our table to chat as usual about the state of things and the impending election. Suddenly she looked grave. "I don't mean for anybody to take this wrong way or anything," she said. "I'm a Democrat. I'm voting for Obama. But his wife, Michelle Obama...I just don't like her. I don't get a good feeling, you know?"
Fair enough. But what kind of feeling, I asked?
Matilda searched the air. "I don't know," she said. "Not a good vibe. She's kind of..." She lifted her nose to indicate snootiness. "You know?"
I started getting a little uneasy. Not liking Michelle Obama was hardly a litmus test of anything. But the way she said "snooty" sounded like uppity, a word historically used to describe a black person who stepped out of his or her designated place, in every sense of the phrase. What Matilda said next confirmed my fear.
"What she said about not being proud of being an American," she went on, wrinkling her nose. "I mean, who is she to say that?"
My insides flared with indignation. Matilda and I had never talked about race, hadn't needed to. Or, like most people in this country, we just let it lie with the subconscious assumption that such talk would only lead to trouble and to fractured relationships that might never heal. Angry at my own avoidance over the years, I tried to compensate in an instant by almost snapping my response: Michelle Obama had every right to critique America, I announced, more right than most, actually, and I felt the same way. Should I go on?
Matilda looked taken aback. She confessed that she thought the grievances of black America were over, hundreds of years old. She loved all people, of course, it wasn't that at all, it was just..
The conversation that unfolded cautiously from there was enlightening, if not exactly encouraging. It turns out a longtime customer had recently called Matilda a racist because she admitted to voting for Hilary Clinton in the primary--and the customer was a white man. I could see how that experience alone might foment some racial resentment in Matilda she wasn't even expecting to feel. But I still argued that she didn't know the true history of the country, its slave beginnings, and needed to learn it. I tried hard not to sound patronizing or overly emotional. But another part of me didn't care a whit how I sounded. Such has been the catharsis of this year.
Needless to say, we didn't come to any kind of resolution. But the trout almondine was fabulous, and Matilda sent me home with homemade cookies on the house. Good business, and good politics, I guess.
The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user Philippe Giboulot. It was used under Creative Commons license.
