Apology To The Black Woman On The Path At Willard Beach

Photo: Soul Cap

Greetings to the Black woman I met on the path at Willard Beach in South Portland on Friday, July 16. Our brief encounter has stayed with me because I regret my choices and hope that by reflecting on them I can do better. 

This is a story about how intentions don't matter nearly as much as impact matters.

It was late on a warm, muggy day when I arrived at the beach. My husband went ahead with two little grandkids eager to get on the playground after a long car ride. After reorganizing the car a bit I hurried to catch up with them and found my way to the path by the outdoor showers. It was wet and puddly and there were wild roses crowding it on both sides. Meant to be a two-way path, but only if both parties skirted the puddles in the center and scraped the edge of the roses.

I was about halfway up the path when I saw you at the other end. You had almost shoulder length curly dark hair and a blue print dress. I'm not sure how old I thought you were but definitely an adult and definitely younger than me.

I kept to my edge of the path and continued as you began walking toward me. When we were about six feet apart, skirting our respective edges around the puddles, I said, "Excuse me" in what I thought was a polite tone. I thought about stopping to let you pass but I didn't. As you passed me you said distinctly but quietly, "She's everywhere I go." There was no one else nearby that you might have been talking to or about, though I suppose it's possible you were on the phone talking into a bluetooth device I couldn't see. My impression was that you were speaking both to me and about me.

Doing the work to examine my own racism within a system of enforced white supremacy that has benefited me for 64 years, I found these feelings: surprise that you spoke; hurt that my "excuse me" wasn't viewed as the polite expression I intended; annoyed that I was being lumped in with all the white women hogging all the paths; compassion for the weariness in your tone; confusion about what, if anything, I had gotten wrong; fear at the iceberg that your brief sentence is the tip of; exasperation that a Black person in the whitest state in the nation expressed annoyance at being surrounded by whiteness.

Reflecting on my brief utterance, it occurred to me that the words "excuse me" can be weaponized with sarcasm and undoubtedly are by passive-aggressive white women.

Reflecting on how my body took up space that could have been yielded, I realize that my upbringing in a society dominated by white privilege was worse than useless. As the older person and the one who was already on the path, I assumed my right to keep using it.

As a white person, I have never expected a person of color to step off the sidewalk to let me pass. But I look like a whole lot of people that not only expected it but might use violence to enforce it. Even a woman definitely too young to have lived through the Jim Crow segregation practices that traumatized my young parents in Georgia in 1955 probably knows this in her bones.

Even if she was not the descendant of enslaved Africans, but possibly part of the diaspora communities from Somalia, Sudan, and Democratic Republic of Congo that now live in southern Maine. Because Jim Crow doesn't care what country you were born in or what language you learned to speak as a toddler. The fact that you don't look white is the only salient fact for segregationists.

So I want to apologize to you, Black woman on the beach path. 

I wish I had paused on the path and let you pass without comment. I might have said "hello" as you passed by, but I wish I had not said "excuse me."

Thank you for saying what you did. Without it, I would have quickly forgotten our brief encounter.

I would have gone on clicking heart on the Instagram posts of both ___brick and the group blacksand.surf who are claiming the right to surf and otherwise enjoy the beach while Black in California. 

Source: How the memory of a black resort refused to fade "A bather at Bruce’s Beach. The Shades of LA Collection, LA County Library"

I know the history that a Black resort owned by the Bruce family was thriving until 1924 when it was stolen from them by the City of Manhattan Beach.

I know that when I got up this morning both Huntington Beach and Proud Boys were trending on Twitter, because of a white supremacist rally yesterday in another southern California beach town. Some history on that location, as reported by Mark McDermott in easyreadernews.com:

in early 1926, the most ambitious Black resort of all, the Pacific Beach Club, which was near completion in Huntington Beach and intended to be “the grandest escape of all” for Black Californians, complete with Eygptial Revival architecture, was destroyed by arson. The project had been headed by Ceruti and was clearly intended not only as a resort but as an act of economic activism, a statement that Black people would not only have a place at the beach, but build the “Queen of the Pacific.” It had all gone up in flames. Though no arrests were ever made, the Ku Klux Klan’s very active presence in Southern California at the time caused many to believe that they had started the fire. 

I would have gone on shaking my head at the 2020 Olympics committee that banned swim caps that could be worn comfortably by Black women and others with thick, curly hair. Their reasoning: such caps don't follow "the natural form of the head."

Photo: SoulCap.com

Whose head is the natural form? 

I'm going to remember your words -- "She's everywhere I go" -- the next time I have an opportunity to hold space for a person in a Black body. And I'm going to do better at using that opportunity, because I sincerely want to, and to honor the work that you did for me when you spoke up. Because only impact matters.

FIGHTING INDIANS Documentary: A People Unconquered

Dwayne Tomah speaks in the Passamoquoddy language to the school board: "I'm not feeling honored."
Source: still from video Skowhegan Mascot Public Forum Jan 2019 by Somerset Community TV 11.

Last night we saw the premiere of a documentary about the successful struggle to retire the last "Indian" school mascot in Maine. 

The Maine International Film Festival (MIFF24) presented FIGHTING INDIANS by Skowhegan High School alums Mark Cooley and Derek Ellis as a work-in-progress, but it is pretty nearly finished.

Full disclosure: I watched the film with special interest as I knew it was likely I would appear at some point, and we sat with one of the cinematographers, John Harlow, and his family. His late father Doug Harlow's byline on a newspaper article was one of many poignant images for me. So was seeing my great-niece Leah Savage speaking at a public forum accompanied by her sister Sydalia. Ditto seeing my former student and neighbor Sikwani Dana as a young girl testifying to how hard it is to grow up Native in central Maine.

Source: still from video Skowhegan Mascot Public Forum Jan 2019 by Somerset Community TV 11.

Her sister Maulian Dana and their dad Barry carry the film's narrative, appropriately enough since they led the years long retirement drive. Maulian works as the Ambassador of the Penobscot Nation and Barry is a chief who served the tribe years ago in that capacity. John Bear Mitchell, also Penobscot and a professor at the University of Maine campus built on land ceded by the tribe, was a third strong voice in the film. Dwayne Tomah, a Passamoquoddy language and culture keeper who gifted us with a gathering song as a special treat before the screening, was a rare treat; his appearance in full regalia to speak in Passamoquoddy to the school board in 2019 was riveting and an anchor for the film. 

I know all these people, so I'm not an impartial reviewer.

The filmmakers skillfully built their story from a huge trove of material, and they made the bold decision to include the context of struggles to retire professional sports "Indian" mascots and team names. Also the land theft, massacres, child removal, and tokenization Native people have endured since Columbus raped his way into the "New" World. It's a big topic and maybe the film is a little too long, but not much. For the final edit I'd advise cutting some of the sports journalists' remarks and some of the background material on the Washington DC football team's efforts to buy influence with Native people nationwide.

Strong use of social media posts by the Skowhegan "Indian Pride" group and its supporters told the tale that interviews could not -- because few would agree to be interviewed for the project. Still, we heard from them plenty in videos of school board meetings and public forums. An excellent example was a young woman who claims Native ancestry and who played a drum so ignorantly that it elicited face palms of embarassment for her from the actual Natives in the audience.

Because you can't just paint your face or put feathers in your hair or play a drum and become "Indian" -- and that is the main point of the film. 

In Maine, Wabanaki people -- an umbrella term for the five remaining tribes -- explain that seeing things sacred to their ceremonies being ignorantly misused is painful. Their identity can't be faked; it has to be learned from infancy, through practice, and we see a bit of this in the film.

FIGHTING INDIANS includes my testimony to the school board at a public forum in February, 2019. I had permission from Maulian to read some of the nasty, misogynist, racist slurs and threats against her from comments on social media. She wanted the school board to hear the reality giving lie to the ubiquitous claim that the school mascot "honored" Native people. One of the comments I shared: "We conquered them and can use them however we like."

But the Wabanaki have survived attempted genocide, and are a people unconquered. 

Source: still from video Barry Dana - Wigwam at the Univ. of Maine, Orono

Twelve thousand years of continuous existence in what's now called Maine makes them a people determined to survive in order to honor their ancestors who endured slaughter and child abuse at the hands of the state.

Kudos to Ellis and Cooley. This is an important film, a landmark in Maine history. I had not anticipated how much the audience would laugh during this film about difficult truths, but it seemed appropriate because humor is a strong element in Wabanaki culture. Maybe even a survival strategy?

Appropriately for a theatre full of activists, we were sent home with an action item: call Gov. Janet Mills and urge her to sign legislation honoring the sovereignty of Maine's Native governments. Contact info for the Governor: 207-287-3531 or email using her contact form. 

FIGHTING INDIANS can be seen again tonight (July 11, 2021) at the Skowhegan Drive-in as MIFF24 continues. Tickets are available here.