TAKE ALL THE SPACE YOU NEED (FOR NOW)
It was a humid summer afternoon. I ventured with my son to a few stores along East 86th Street, enjoying parts of the city we don’t normally venture. I wore a black and orange Free Minds Free People shirt, my young one a white t-shirt and shorts. The sidewalks felt like people were walking shoulder to shoulder, two steps slower than their normal pace.
As we made our way up 3rd Avenue to Harlem, an elder white woman in a walker came to a stop and said “Excuse me.” My native New Yorker face belies my tendency towards hospitality and grace. “Do you need help?”
She says in , “You know the problem with you people is …” I already observed how she had already made a few snap judgments and my body already tightened up in anger. “… you really need to talk to your people about health and weight.” A handful of reactions ran through my mind as I clenched my fist. In the few seconds that felt like a few minutes, her voice had become a monotonous whistle waiting for me to break it. The faces around me had gone from minding their business to minding mine. NYC has any number of racial and intergenerational incidents daily, occurrences for people to film and cast judgments upon.
In that moment, I also recognized that my fist was holding my son’s hand. I mustered with furious eyes and bellicose tone: “THANK YOU! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!” My words rang out across the sidewalk as I rushed past the crowds. I took a seat in an emptier block just underneath a few CONTINUE READING: Take All The Space You Need (For Now) | The Jose Vilson
