Not so black & white
What James Blake has to teach us about race relations in America
SHAVE off a few years — and a few pounds — and I could easily be James Blake. Which is why his arrest this week outside Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt hotel has left me so rattled.
Like Blake, I’m a welleducated and mixedrace urbanite, a product of the ethnic optimism that flourrightsshed throughout’70s and ’80s. much of America in the postcivil
Unlike Blake, I am neither rich nor famous — but I inhabit a similar world where I am almost always thhe darkest person in the room. Living in Manhattan, I’ve seen stopandfrisk firsthand, yet personally have never — ever! — tussled with the police. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s them — maybe it’s merely a matter of time — but I’ve yet to become a statistic of One Police Plaza.
Blake, however, was clearly not so lucky. While many will insist his arrest confirms that no AfricanAmerican is safe from police aggression, Blake’s response elegantly suggests a more complicated and nuanced narrative.
Indeed, within 24 hours of being tackled and handcuffed while waiting for his car to take him to the US Open, Blake had cannily — and with supreme class — transformed himself from victim to victor.
Armed with a mix of TV and social media, Blake picked himself up, dusted himself off and demanded accountability. He challenged both the NYPD and the arresting officers to explain their actions and issue an apology. He kept his calm, avoided assigning blame and acknowledged the often complex and chaotic realities of bigcity policing.
Along the way, there were no requests for mass protests; no “reaching out” to Reverend Al, no canned critiques of “white privilege” or bellicose claims of police brutality. Blake could have, and probably should have, been far more irate.
But he kept the focus squarely where it mattered most — on James Blake. “I probably wouldn’t be so indignant about it, if it wasn’t so obvious,” Blake told “Good Morning America” last week. He said that “excessive force” rather than racial profiling was to blame.
As it turns out, arresting Officer James Frascatore has five civilian complaints and two excessiveforce lawsuits in just four years on the job. He is now badgeless, gunless and of underthis outcry investigation.sAr— and NYPDcontrition
Without a doubt, Blake owes much — to his wealth and prominence. But it would be far too easy to dismiss this incident as merely the privilege of the onepercent. Instead, Blake’s response stands as a sharp rebuke to progressive notions that blacks are powerless in their quest for social justice and an end to police brutality.
Indeed, from Baltimore to BedStuy, AfricanAmericans have been positioned by the left as impotent bit players rallying against the excessiveness of white police protagonists. “This is and has always been a white problem of violence . . . there’s not much that we can do to stop the violence against us,” Black Lives Matter activist Julius Jones told Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton last month in New Hampshire.
Childish and defeatist, such sentiments may make for good clickbait. But they are both fundamentally false — half of the cops accused of killing Freddie Gray were black — and do little to help AfricanAmericans actually take control of their own destinies.
Blake, however, did just that, and potently proved that blacks can (and must) become agents of their own empowerment. Sure, Blake’s voice is clearly amplified by his fame, if not his good looks. But his message of demanding individual accountability offers a blueprint for both activists and common folk in every economic bracket.
And I ought to know. In both personal and professional situations, I’ve been repeatedly mistaken for a waiter or caterer or messenger or limousine driver. This has happened while wearing shorts or a suit, a tie or a Tshirt. It’s an occupational hazard of living among the elite that every brown person knows far too well. True, this is hardly akin to be tackled by six officers, but it is deeply, deeply offensive.
A younger me would become incensed — screaming at store managers, writing complaint letters to CEOs and leveling threats of public embarrassment. My mother — who’s white and Jewish — would become even more vocal. But lately I’ve kept a calmer head.
Earlier this summer, for instance, I was treating mom to brunch at a sophisticated Soho restaurant when a thirtysomething white dude suggested I take his order.
“Considering all the waiters are in uniform, and Italian, why exactly would you think I work here?” I asked. His excuse was, unsurprisingly, weak and mumbled, but he was clearly embarrassed and sincerely apologetic. As we exchanged awkward glances, he knew that I knew that he should clearly know better.
Like Blake, I challenged this man on an individual level and he was forced to account for his actions. Maybe I’m naïve, or perhaps just optimistic, but I’m certain he’ll think twice before assuming all brown folk are on the payroll.
As for me, I went back to my brunch — and then on to dinner later that night at a buzzy favorite on the Upper West Side. The place was packed and popping, so much so that I asked the first guy I encountered to help get me a table. He was tall and white and looked like he worked there. But instead of a corner booth he gave me an odd look — turned out he, like me, was a hungry patron.
And as my own misstep humblingly confirms, we could all benefit from a dose of Blakestyled levelheadedness.