It seems like a lot of my life events happen at Harris Teeter. It’s probably because I have shopped there once a week for over twenty years. If you do the math, that’s around 50 times a year for 20 years – that means I’ve been in a Wilmington Harris Teeter about 1000 times. If each visit is for half and hour, I’ve spent 500 hours in Harris Teeter.

On this day, I had loaded up my groceries into the trunk and I climbed into the drivers seat. I wasn’t quite ready to crank the car as I wanted to check my text messages. I looked up from my phone and saw a black man crossing in front of my car. Without a single thought, I reached over and hit the automatic door locks to lock my door.  I’m ashamed to admit it, but I have an unconscious fear of black men.

Why did I have a fear of black men?  I wasn’t born with it.  It slowly developed during my childhood.  

The things that you learn as a child become inherent thoughts and reflexive behaviors when you are an adult.

I was mugged by a tall black teenager when I was fourteen years old. His name was Archie L. Judge.

He wanted the three gold chains that I was wearing, so he waited until I was alone in the stairwell of my school. He reached down and yanked them off. To my credit, I did run up the stairs and chase him down the hallway but he got away.

The police identified him and we pressed charges. I can still remember that I wore a purple Liz Claiborne dress when my daddy escorted me to district court in downtown Charlotte. I was terrified.  When I was on the witness stand, I pointed him out to the jury. “There he is.” 

Sadly, this was the first entry in Archie’s very long prison record.  He died in prison three years ago.

I developed a fear of black men from that traumatic experience when I was fourteen years old. But that is just part of the story.  

The truth is that growing up in the south, I didn’t hear many positive about African-Americans, especially men. It was mostly derogatory.  I learned the stereotype that black men were criminals and I learned to lock my car door when I saw them.  By the time I was an adult, it was a reflex.

After receiving Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I was in college, I learned about how God commands us to love ALL people.  I understood that any amount of racism was wrong. 

Unfortunately, I have been unable to unseat some of those things that I learned as a child and the reflexes that came with them.  I have not been able to completely defeat my reflex to lock my car doors when I see a black man nearby.  Because of being mugged and what white society taught me, as an adult, I have this reflex.  I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.

After I locked my car door in the Harris Teeter parking lot, the black man walked up to my car. I rolled down the window, and he proceeded to ask me if I liked my Acura MDX. He wanted to trade in his Lexus for an Acura and he wanted to know from someone who drove one what the car was like. We proceeded to have a long discussion about my car and his car and the best place in Wilmington to buy cars (Auto Wholesale).

At the end of our congenial discussion, I reached my hand out the window to introduce myself. “My name is Lisa,” I said with a smile. “My name is Derrick,” he replied. He had a nice smile, kind eyes, and a little bit of gray in his hair.  He was a perfect gentleman.

After we said goodbye, I rolled up my window and sat within my four locked car doors for a long time. I felt horrible.  I had judged Derrick because of his skin color.

Derrick wasn’t a threat to my safely but he was a very kind and friendly human being. He was not who my reflexes told me he was. 

What’s the point? The point is this: My behavior (judging a person by the color of their skin) was WRONG. In my own defense, it was a reflex that I’ve lived with for thirty years. It was a learned behavior that I’ve not be able to unlearn.  But it was still WRONG.

To all of the black men that I have judged as violent and scary, I am sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me.

If you are honest with yourself and look at your own behavior, you may find that you have your own reflexes and judgments against people who are different than you.

I can’t completely turn off the thoughts in my head or my reflexes. But what I CAN do is not pass them down to my children.

I don’t believe my children (who are both young adults now) have EVER heard me say something derogatory about a person of another race.

Instead, I have taught my children that we are all created as equals in the eyes of God. We are all carriers of intelligence. We are all capable of success. And we are equally capable of sin.  Our skin color or hair types does not matter.

My children have not learned judgment and fear of other races. They have learned love and respect and to embrace those who are different than us. We did this purposefully.  We joined a small group that had no other white people.  In our home school classroom, I hung a picture of Martin Luther King.  I’m thrilled that my daughter’s boyfriend is Hispanic.  I always told her that she could marry a man of any color.

I can’t defeat my innate reflexes to lock the car door, but I can defeat racism by not passing it down to the next generation.  And by repenting each time I am judgmental.  Racism is WRONG.

To Derrick, wherever you are, I am sorry.

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