What is the Right Thing & When Do You Do It?

MY friends and I had been out *** when we got in the elevator. There were four of us, Karen, Jenny, Eric, and myself, all of us white, all of us stoned and headed up to Karen's apartment on the 13th floor to recover. I was feeling pretty fuzzy.

A man got on the elevator in front of us. He was Black and well-dressed, probably in his early 20s. Two women, who were also Black, entered the now-crowded box and stood in front of us. The man pushed a button and the doors closed on the seven of us. We were lined up, divided racially in rows with my three friends and myself behind the three strangers. The woman in front of me reached over and pushed a button for the third floor.

"Thirteen," said Karen, who was standing behind the Black man. He lifted his hand, paused for a moment, and then dropped his arm.

"Nothing personal, but I'm not the doorman."

The elevator was silent. He repeated himself. "I'm not trying to be rude. You understand," he said.

Karen looked flustered. "I just didn't want to be rude and reach around you," she said nervously, as he moved aside so she could push button 13. The two women got out as the elevator stopped the third floor.

"It's nothing personal, but you can see why I might have a problem with that," the man explained.

"You understand," He turned to me. I returned his look with a blank stare. I was clinging to the back wall, my brain slowly shifting focus from intense concentration on maintaining my balance in a moving object to the realization that someone was speaking to me.

"C'mon, think about it!" he turned to Eric. "You know what I'm talking about."

Eric laughed, quickly and loudly. "Yeah, all right, I get it." But the man turned back to face the buttons. We rode to his floor in an uncomfortable silence.

"Have a good evening," he said, not looking at us as he stepped out. Eric told him to take it easy. The rest of us were silent. "Bye," I whispered, after the door was almost closed. I was having problems with my timing that night.

BUT as we got out on our unlucky floor, Karen's embarrassment changed to anger. "How rude! I should have said, 'Would you push the button for me if I was Black?'"

Jenny and Eric echoed her thoughts. "It shouldn't make any difference whether a person is white or Black for you to be polite to them!" Eric said.

"He was making an issue out of something that wasn't an issue," Jenny said. "He was forcing us to label him as a Black man when we hadn't."

BUT as the discussion of the man's obnoxious behavior continued, some of my friends' arguments started to sound familiar.

"Hey wait a sec. This sounds like the kind of thing old men say about women and opening doors."

"What?" They turned to me, confused and I think probably shocked that I could still form words.

"You know, what men used to say about the Women's Movement--Does this mean I can never open a door for a woman again? It's almost the same thing."

They disagreed. "It's a totally different situation. This is something that we asked him to do for us, not something you do for someone."

I was not convinced. "Well, what about women making coffee for a coworker? You could say a woman was just being rude if she refuses, but she has a point to make."

They still disagreed. And other people I spoke with the next day took their position.

"Some Blacks have some kind of double standard, but that's not right," said Mike. "Your friend would have said the same thing to a white guy."

BUT something about that kind of argument disturbs me. The fact is that it was not a "white guy" she spoke to. And she is not a Black woman.

Hypothesizing about what might have happened if the situation were different really is irrelevant. It is naive to think that race and sex and anything else just should not matter. It is artificial and destructive to pretend that they can be ignored.

I would probably react differently to a coworker who was a woman if she asked me to get her coffee than I would to a man. And while I realize that is probably not a fair attitude, I still will not change my position.

I do not agree with my friend Jenny that it is possible to avoid labels. At least, I (sadly) believe that no time in the future will people be able to look at others as JUST people, without categorizing them by race and sex and class and everything else. The idea is horribly pragmatic, and pessimistic, but I can not avoid believing that it is true.

And insistence that people should just ignore these factors reeks of the kind of placating "polite feminism" or gradual action that does more damage to rights groups by discouraging any kind of real change. It is only a modified version of the "don't make waves" theory that the privileged class feeds the rest to ensure they remain on top.

I am not saying that hostility is the answer. But clear, direct--and polite--explanations are probably the best responses to daily enoucters with racism or sexism.

So I would explain myself--politely--to a man who asked me to get him coffee. And I would hope that if he actually were so backward to think it was part of a woman's job responsibilities towards the male population of the office, I would help to bring him into the modern world.

And if he was merely asking a coworker for a friendly favor, I would expect him to understand. To laugh about it, even. And maybe to analyze the motivation behind his actions a little more deeply.

And that is exactly what the man in the elevator did. My friends thought the situation was too trivial to make an issue out of, but I have to disagree. Daily activities, encounters with strangers may not be life-changing events, but they form the bulk of a person's life. The personal is political, especially because the personal is all that most people have to work with.

And if an incident is really so slight, any person's objection should not cause such offense. Those who are being questioned should have the generosity to allow another the objection.

STILL, I am not sure whether I think the man did the right thing. He walked out of the elevator embarrassed. We were embarrassed. Karen was offended. But he was polite, direct. He made his point and tried not to offend.

If I had been him, I don't know if I would have said anything. But, of course, I am not. I guess that's the point.