Walking While White — An Awakening
About a month before the streets filled with protestors outraged by the murder of George Floyd, my husband and I devoted our time to walking them. Our presence was not born of politics or despair, but a reaction to Covid-19. Our county in suburban New York had been hit hard. When the weather warmed, we longed to get outside. The parks near us were either closed or dangerously crowded and we couldn’t travel. So we hit the pavement.
Back in March, during a stay-at-home-motivated basement decluttering, we came across an old paper street map of our town. Finding it prompted a plan: we committed to walking every single street in our town. Setting a goal seemed to give purpose to our daily forays. Now we’re more than a third of the way finished. The blue highlight we use to mark the areas on the map we’ve covered is expanding in all directions.
But this week our walks through our 80%-white town feel like something else entirely.
We are both white, in our sixties, and as we make our way down tiny lanes in new neighborhoods, rounds corners we’ve never seen before, or brazenly walk down the occasional street marked “private,” now we ask ourselves: what if we weren’t white?
I have little doubt that the police would have been called dozens of times during our rambles around town. What would have happened after that is anyone’s guess. As it is, not one person has asked us what we’re doing, why we’re walking on their cul-de-sac, or stopping in front of their houses (admittedly to check house prices on Zillow with our phones).
A month into walking, I believed we were really exploring our town, seeing it up close. Not until George Floyd was killed, and nearby New York City, not to mention Minneapolis, LA, Oakland, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Houston, and almost every other city in this country exploded — did I realize that we hadn’t been paying attention at all.
Early in our journey, most of what we noticed was Covid-related. Windows were decorated with children’s drawings of rainbows. At first I thought this was an elementary school distance-learning assignment, or maybe even a treasure hunt. Now I know it’s a thing — rainbows drawn by kids to boost morale during the pandemic. We also pass a thin but regular stream of discarded blue rubber gloves and paper masks on the side of the roads — presumably tossed out of car windows. My instinct is to pick up the trash, but I leave this virus detritus untouched.
