Sweet Like Chocolate

Ten

Morton

The rest of that entire day allowed Edward to get to know me and my life a little better. I even took that extra step and explained to him how hard it was as a Black woman in the United States.

"No,  we don't think you owe us anything, but because of what happened  in a country that enslaved us, even today, we have to face racism on a daily basis."

"I don't get it though," He told me over lunch. "You all have jobs. Segregation has been deemed illegal. You all have the rights as us."

"But that doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist, Edward." I swear it was like teaching a child their ABCs. But the good thing was that he was slowly, but surely getting it and understanding all of this in a new light.

Edward opened up and told me about his experiences growing up in a racist household.

"My father would pull out Black Face tapes from the '60's. He would sit me down and make me watch it for hours." He told me.

"How did that make you feel?"

"I was confused. Dumbfounded. I didn't see any different in skin color until I was about eight, and my father pulled me and my sister out of bed in the middle of the night."

I shook my head. "Edward, Black Women are known to be the most nurturing, strongest beings on this planet. Do you know what we go through?" I explained. "So many of us raise a child without a father. Without the provider. We take on both those roles for our children." I told him. "Did you have both your parents growing up?"

He nodded. "I didn't. And unfortunately, my daughter doesn't as well." I broke down the biased and stereotypes.  I even explained the dream that Martin had.  I told him how it feels to be racially profiled when you walk into a store to buy something with your own money. "Our Black men get the biggest wrap. And you wonder why they are so against the world. Filled with so much anger towards your kind... toward the government. Because in reality, if you really had open eyes, you'll see the oppression as clear as day. Because they get shot and killed for absolutely nothing." I said, with more emotion in my voice. "Nothing. Innocent fathers are sent to jail. Does anyone deserve that?"

"Woah. That's horrible."

Edward reached across the table and wiped the tears from my eyes. "My father was shot for resisting an arrest of a crime that he didn't do." I admitted, more tears coming along with my word. "A stupid one. He didn't have any criminal record. He was a well educated man. He had a nine to five like the normal American citizen. A White woman saw him in the street on her way to work, working on his truck.  It had broken down on the side of the highway. She called the police with suspicion of breaking into a car."

Edward's eyes grew wide.  He was speechless. But I wasn't done. "When the officers pulled up and saw him fixing the motors on his windows, they didn't ask any questions. They told him to put his hands up on the spot. When asked what he was being arrested for, they didn't even tell him why. He began resisting, and they shot him in the leg." I had been dapping my eyes with the napkins that they put in my bag.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Nicole. I honestly hadn't thought about it that way... "

"Yeah,  well now you know." I sniffed two times and got myself together. "To be racist is to be ignorant, Edward. We are all equal by God's eyes. Love is blind."

"I completely agree with you on all of that."

"Good." I smiled at him and wiped the last drops from my eyes.  "I hope that can give you more of an understatement."

Edward surely did look and seem like he had a new light on things. It probably didn't change him all at once, but hell, it was a start.