A Sad State of Affairs. Not strictly BP-related.

Yesterday, I was at Home Depot.  I needed some advice as to how to accomplish something.  The HD employee parolling the aisle listened to my problem, which was how to adhere two pieces of rope to each other, and he gave me a suggestion.

This employee was black.  He had an accent, which I think was Haitian.  He told me I should use a kind of thing that would wrap around the pieces of rope, and I could tighten it.  He didn't explain it clearly, and I didn't understand what this thing was.  They sell them in the electric department, and he was prepared to walk me over there and show me.  But just as a last attempt to get me to recognize what this thing was, he said, "you know, when the police arrest you, and they tie that thing around your wrists?"

I want to say two things.  One is that I applaud Home Depot, and I always have, for their willingness to hire people with records, and for the confidence and hopefulness they have in these employees.  Frankly, it makes me feel good to imagine, as I often do, that the person helping me is being advantaged in precisely that way by a great company.

The other thing is that this employee was open, artless, and apparently completely lacking in self-consciousness about the interaction he and I had.  This experience is so pervasive to him, and to people "who look like" him, perhaps to most everyone he knows, that it seemed not to occur to him that it wasn't common to everyone.

This is a terrible thing.  "We" have mistreated "them" for a very long time, and we continue to do it.  My friend Jean Caze, whom some of you know, recently stayed with me for a while.  One day, he came home and told me a story of having been stopped by police, not ours, about what sounded like a very minor bit of driving behavior.  I don't remember what it was, but I remember thinking how unlikely it would have been that an officer would have stopped me for the same thing.  Jean got stopped not for what he did, but for what he looks like.

So I felt very badly about the interaction I had at HD.  It was just very sad.  I really felt for the guy, and I'm glad and proud that HD works with these people as it does.  And I don't only mean black people.  When I lived in Massachusetts, I was the consulting psychiatrist for a prison for a few years.  It was noteworthy how many of the inmates, black and caucasian, had HD in their work histories.

Thanks, HD.