My life as a Black person

As fantastic as it could be, one day I opened my eyes, and thought of how lucky I was that it was Sunday and I didn’t have to go to work, and that’s why will be able to spend my day with my relatives whom I haven’t seen for a few weeks. Then, I was planning to go out to see my friends whom I also see quite rare because of the quarantine. I would like to have a cup of coffee with them at Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts on Brighton Beach, and maybe then to enjoy the night hours somewhere in Manhattan. Deciding not to lose time, I quickly jumped from my bed with the intention to take a shower and leave the house in around an hour.
But when I entered the bathroom and habitually looked at the mirror, I thought there was something wrong with my eyes. OMG! In the mirror I saw a black male with curly hair, a snub-nose, beautiful dark eyes, and wide lips, twice as wide as mine - a person which did not bear any features of a white person. The only positive thing was that I did not look overweight, like I was before, I looked tall and quite lean. I was in such a shock that the first couple of minutes I could not neither laugh nor cry. I have never been a racist, never believed in good or bad nations. I have never been interested to what nation a person belongs; I did not care about it at all.  Though I have heard thousands of stories about white racism based on the most whites people’s  feelings of superiority as well as about the humiliation and inferiority many black people had to experience during their lifetime while residing among the white majority ( I have heard that the black prefer to live among the people of color because they  were sure that to live among the white is very much unsafe for the black), yet, I never fully believed in the truthfulness of these stories. But, on that day, I was given a chance to realize where the truth is.
      Thousands of thoughts were running through my head when I was leaving my apartment. On the one hand, I was scared because being black was a stigma  those days; I still kept in my mind the BLMs' demonstrations and the hate many of the whites felt the relation to the blacks ,  but on the other , I was curious to learn (if I was given such a chance),  what it is to be black, following  their own cultural views and  traditions, living among the white majority. Sure, I was very well aware of  the biases, stereotypes and prejudices the white had regarding the black, but never in my life have I seen a white person  offended by a black  without a reason, nor I ever knew any examples when a black person would have been rejected  a decent working position, being a professional, only because his/ her skin was black.
The first thing I decided to do was to go to Starbuck and to have a cup of coffee. There were a lot of young people there, both white and black, waiting in the same line and communicating with each other in a very friendly manner. They hardly knew each other; they were discussing some sport events, like, for example, the rumors of Oscar De La Hoya’s coming back to boxing.  I decided to join their conversation, and they were not against.  Later, we were sitting at one table, drinking coffee, communicating, and parted like friends who have known each other for ages.

To get to my relatives, I had to take a train, and that’s where I saw some white ladies who were trying to take their seat a little farther from me, and who were watching their bags especially attentively. That is when I realized that there is a stereotype that most of the young black don’t work, get their welfare, consume drugs, and stealing people’s property is one of their ways to get money for drugs. I felt extremely uncomfortable; I wanted to persuade them that not all the black people are the same, but at the time of quarantine, when we had to keep the distance of 6 feet from each other, I would not have been able to start the discussion from afar; I didn’t want to risk either my or their lives. Besides, there were many people in the train, and I didn’t want to attract their attention, given the tension in our society, related to Covid 19 pandemic, consequently the discussion could have taken either way (direction).  That was a bitter reality, I finally began to realize that racism is still alive, that till nowadays the majority of the whites are still prejudiced about the black, thinking of them all as of drug dealers, drug users, thieves, etc., living at the expense of the white  (as if there are no white drug addicted people in our country). For example, despite the stereotype that the black are “champions” in drug consuming, drug abuse is widely used in most of the republics of the former Soviet Union years ago. In Odessa (the Ukraine), the city where I was born, there is no black population at all, but the white abuse drugs as much as the black population in NY.   
      When I was leaving the train, I accidentally stumbled a white middle- aged woman. I immediately made an excuse and smiled at her, but she looked at me as if I was going to attack her, answered nothing, and again I felt that she thought of me not as of an equal, but as the one who is inferior in comparison to her only because my skin is black and hers is white.
  Unfortunately, now I am finally sure that racism is not a myth nowadays; it is still alive, and only G-d knows when it will be over. I was walking along the street, saw a lot of policemen, both black and white, men and women, and thought that these people, who risk their lives to protect us,  belong to different races, that black policemen are murdered as often as the white ones, but all of them help the people in need and even give their lives for our safety without thinking what color our skin is.
On the way to my relatives’ house I tried to find out why the white feel such a disparaging attitude to the black people. At that moment I remembered my white friends’ reasoning that black people are mostly associated with poverty, laziness, jealousy, reluctance to work on the positions such as waiters, cleaners, or other low paid jobs, preferring government money, etc. They tried to persuade me that the black hate the white, usually aggressive towards the white, because they believe that nowadays people of color deserve more than the rest of the population because it is “their country, “ and now it’s their time to get reimbursement for all the troubles their  ancestors had to experience in the past.  Now, being black, I somehow understood their resentment, but to be objective nowadays  the life of the black people slowly but steadily is changing  for a better one, and we, as black, should also participate in this movement for the sake of us, our children’s and our grandchildren’s future.
I have no words to describe my relatives’ feelings when they saw me black; my aunt was on the way to the heart attack, but my uncle seemed not to be surprised at all. He was calm and even tried to joke. He just said that it was time to have dinner because he was deadly hungry. Usually, our dinners were my favorite time when we exchanged our thoughts, told each other of what has taken place during a week, laughed a lot, remembered the funniest stories from my childhood, but this time the dinner was different.  My aunt ate almost nothing, while I and my uncle had a good snack, and even drank a glass of wine to relax. I left my aunt with a broken heart, but my uncle said that he was not against even if I decide to marry a black girl; he just asked me to choose a beautiful and a kind girl.
I have always thought that my relatives  are very progressive; they have always told me that all people are equal and I should treat all races as mine, but when it came to a real life, it turned out that it is easier to say than to do. I do not remember who told that we are all racists to some extent, and it is incredibly sad!