Extremists are all around us

When I saw the clips of the Trump supporters terrorizing the U.S. Capitol a little more than a week ago, I thought of my old landlord.

As I opened the front door of my Ansonia apartment, I could hear the pop music coming from what sounded like the AM station of a small portable boombox. My landlord was there to renovate a closet. We agreed that he would come for an unspecified number of Saturdays until the project was done. This was the second or third time he had come that month. In the four years I lived there, the project was never finished.

“Hello,” I said, cautiously opening my door.

The blond haired, middleaged man stared at me and frowned. “You’re wearing that shirt again,” he said.

“What’s wrong with my shirt?” I thought to myself. I peeked down to remind myself of the shirt I quickly threw on earlier that morning. It was a black v-neck T-shirt with a picture of President Barack Obama’s face in technicolor.

“You wear that shirt a lot,” he added.

I did. It was one of my favorite tees. It was colorful, it fit me well, and I liked celebrating the achievement of a Black person becoming president. To me Barack Obama was not only a symbol of hope, but also of success, discipline, intelligence, progression and class.

To my landlord, my Barack Obama shirt represented some kind of protest — a protest that seemed unwelcome in my apartment that I was renting ... even though I viewed it as my private space and a place where I thought I could wear whatever I wanted.

My landlord was a Trump supporter. I learned that he liked to voice his opposing political views to my dad when he’d come to visit, and they saw each other outside.

I thought about the ways in which my landlord came into my space and criticized my clothing and my beliefs with one disapproving look and two sentences. I thought about the other times he’d rang my doorbell incessantly and when I finally answered, he met with a disapproving look, as if I took too long to respond to his unannounced visit.

There were numerous small incidents like this. Separately, each incident seemed silly and insignificant, but cumulatively these were a string of microaggressions. It was like my landlord constantly wanted to remind me that he was in control of my apartment and the house that it was in. He made me aware that my rights as a tenant came secondary to his convenience.

He seemed to crave control.

The terrorists, who invaded the Capitol building, also wanted to have power over a space they didn’t control.

I wondered if my landlord ever saw me as his equal. I wondered if they felt that I was “just another Black person who needed help.” I was newly separated and needed an apartment quickly, and I was only working part-time. My landlord and his wife allowed me to pay my rent on a sliding scale until I was working full time again. I appreciated that. Their generosity also came with a price.

After the shirt incident, I saw my landlord differently. I knew it was time to move. I was starting to feel unsafe in that suburb. The neighborhood also looked different from when I first moved there. The Trump signs seemed to shine a little brighter in my neighbors’ front yards. Some of my neighbors even stopped speaking to me. One of my neighbors was a 10-year-old girl, who suddenly stopped waving one day as I jogged past her house. She never waved again. I wondered if I had been the topic of one of her family’s suppertime conversations. I imagined her dad telling her “I don’t want you talking to that colored girl next door.”

I imagined that they still used words like “colored” and “suppertime” in 2020. I imagined the same of those who invaded the Capitol.

People will say that the terrorists that rioted at the Capitol were extremists, but they were only extreme in their actions. The truth is that we live in close range with people who have extremist thoughts every single day and act on them in small ways with the people who make them feel uncomfortable with their differences.

There were numerous small incidents like this. Separately, each incident seemed silly and insignificant, but cumulatively these were a string of microaggressions.

Stacy Graham-Hunt is a national-award winning columnist and author, who writes about race and culture. She is passionate about Black people telling their own stories. Email her at stacygrahamhunt@gmail.com or follow her on social media @stacyreports.