Freedom ain’t free baby

This food and this drank cost more than just money my love…

I’ve been having this same thought for years now, but more heavily these recent months. Even though I’m black living in America (inherited oppression notwithstanding) I don’t realize how good I’ve got it…generationally speaking.

I’m a 36-year-old black woman living in the Midwest, in a VERY red and rural state (pick one), and as I casually sit at a restaurant enjoying my espresso martini substituted for with tequila, my chest gets heavy at just the mere thought. I can just get up and go as I please, intermingled with any race, ALSO if I so choose. I can’t imagine that being an easy thing for my grandmother/grandfathers (or great) generation.

My waiter was white, the couple that sat to the left of me were also white, with a mix throughout the restaurant. I didn’t have to sit in the back, barely being greeted or just being told my type of patronage is unacceptable…

I came in and did what was natural to me…I smiled, was greeted, and treated like my presence and dollars were going to be just as good as anyone else’s in the room.

I tend to ruminate that all the discrimination, prejudice and just outright racism my predecessors faced just cleaned my path so that I can enjoy the fruits of my labor on a Saturday night.

Grateful.

My grandmother, grandfather, and great aunts and uncles were probably denied access more times than they could count; or at the very least met with callousness and indifference, paying customer be damned. I hate that they had to endure, but I realize that as time has “progressed” it bridged the gap for us to enjoy what we call “me time.”

I remember my sister, mom, and I leaving a Denny’s when I was a kid because we weren’t being served or acknowledged. I was too young to really grasp the implications of what was happening, but that has truly been the extent of it. Night life, travel, shopping and any other leisurely activities attached to customer service and consumerism, I have rarely been overtly discriminated against.

And there’s a privilege in that as well.

I know now that I can ask to speak to a manager, complain, sue, or (now) make a post about said racism if I am slighted, to tell the world about my experience. I wouldn’t be called a Nigger to my face and told to get out. I wouldn’t be seated last at the worst table, served with cold food, if at all. I wouldn’t and have never seen a WHITES ONLY sign before I walk into an establishment.

However, though the delusional would like to believe we live in a “post racial” society (whatever the hell that means), I don’t mean to negate the fact that there are still sundown towns in this country and that the same acts of oppression I have rarely experienced, is still being actively performed and upheld. (i.e. sundown towns).

Unfortunately, some other white people probably look at me and feel the same way. They have seen the tide change and go for harsh lines to translucent ones that are no longer to their benefit. Though they can’t or won’t really say it, to them I…we still don’t belong. They toil and boil on the inside, worried about my brown face, in a sea of their own majority.

Nonetheless, I still couldn’t be more proud that I am being treated as my ancestors should’ve been. I can sit and stand tall, eat well, and laugh and joke with the white couple next to me and be greeted with a smile every time I’m being served. So I will continue to take up space for the spaces that my people couldn’t be in.

“I wouldn’t be able to do this…” I have often thought to myself.

I’ll raise a glass every time and maybe even get a refill.