arvis adjusts my lens

Southside Tour. Saturday, June 13, 2009.

Slowly, throughout the tour, we found out about our tour guide’s incredible past. In his younger days, he knew Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Harold Washington and scores of others who I know deplorably little about but who constitute incredible figures of Black History. These days, he is a friend of the Obamas. He has lived in Chicago for many years and has been involved in all aspects of the Black community. It was with his perceptive lens, knowledge base, wicked humor and cynicism that we saw the Southside of Chicago. It was an exhausting tour—three hours in a van with only one stop. Each place we were had a difficult history for us to understand. We were pummeled with painful statistics and a bitter history of betrayal by our government and our race. Arvis never let us forget our position—no one could escape the fact that we were white voyeurs, driving along in a huge, red van with tinted windows. He never let us forget that we were the only white people for miles and miles. Everything we saw illustrated a painful past and present marked by death, poverty, broken promises and no hope.

By the end of our tour, I felt physically sick with my race and our history. 

After three hours, it got to be too much. We pulled into the Art and Culture Center at Southport and saw the sleek steeds and cowboy hats of folks gathering for a rodeo. All the cowboys were black. That wasn’t too much of a surprise for me. I had read or seen photos somewhere about a black rodeo culture. But Arvis figured no one had. “A Black rodeo!” he exclaimed over and over. “I bet you all can’t believe it! A Black rodeo! These folks here ain’t heard of a Black rodeo!”

I wanted to protest—I don’t have those horrible stereotypes that you think I do! I am here because I care—because I want to know. That’s why I am in this program! That’s why I am on this tour!

It only got worse when he explained his decision to live in South shore. South shore is an all-black community just south of Hyde Park that is economically integrated—the poor living right alongside rich people like Reverend Jesse Jackson. “I gave up on race integration,” he said, “And just went with economic integration.”

I felt hopeless, hopeless.

He talked about how for years in his education, he had been the only black student in his school. He talked about moving to South shore because it was easier, because he didn’t have to answer stupid questions asked by white people when he came home at night.

An incredibly intelligent, well-educated man. A man who was friends with some of history’s greatest. And my race had made him so uncomfortable that he no longer wanted to live with us.