I went to tour an apartment a few days ago in hope that I would rent it but from the first encounter, I got the sense that I was being profiled as incapable of affording the apartment. I am not sure if the awareness of what being black in America represents (a history of systemic oppression) is what kept me feeling like my guide thought I was less than. After explaining to me that the rent excluded all the bills (electricity, water, and internet), I expressed my shock and his immediate reaction was to let me know that if this sounds too high, perhaps it was not the place for me, to which I said “I haven’t said don’t show me the place yet, I came a long way to see this place”. As if to justify his position on the matter, he pressed that the billing structure of separate electricity and internet is standard across the world to which I quickly objected that it was not so in all the world. So, who will tell him? Who will tell this man that as big and diverse as his country is, it does not represent the whole world and as a matter of fact is only a sample size of one? Who will tell him that this African woman though ignorant of his American context is not ignorant or unexposed? I believe we all have a responsibility to do it!
I would have thought nothing of it if I didn’t tour another property with a black woman as my guide. When I toured the first property, the guide showed me only one apartment and the community amenities. He made no attempt to sell me something within my budget perhaps because I had insisted on a particular apartment type. I left the premises wondering if I liked the place enough to suck up the price and I might have liked it that much if the guide attempted to sell it to me. It is now unclear if he was just terrible at his job or he really didn’t think I should be living there. In contrast, the black woman who gave me a tour impressed me first when she called an hour 30 minutes before the tour to confirm, and upon my arrival, she showed me 3 different apartments, she was careful to explain what I needed to do to get the application going and offered her email for any additional questions I might have. I must add that she was not just black, she was of African heritage as well.
I find myself more often than I can count, in places where I have no context about where people are coming from but I am careful not to assume that my context is theirs or that the depth of knowledge I have on a subject matter is the same as theirs because I think it is unfair to do so. I fail sometimes (like when I put pepper in food and I forget that though the man I love is black, his pallet for spice is as weak as a newborn’s) but I am conscious to make amends. I also think it is arrogant to presume that people who have never lived in your country understand the way it works. Worse is to say things like ‘look it up on google’ as though you could not be bothered to offer 5 minutes of your time to share your knowledge. We must take responsibility for each other and not just to be patronising but genuinely interested in helping other people because life pays these things forward in strange ways!
