Looking through my old journals…

Sunday, December 23, 1990

James McQueen

James McQueen looked me square in the eye

and said, “Look at the color of my skin.”

He tapped the back of his right hand

with his left index and middle fingers.

“This brown skin that everybody calls black

means I have to bust my butt being better

at everything just to stay even.

To get ahead is a whole other thing.”

His eyes didn’t accuse or indict me,

and his smile had the light of friendship in it.

“I have a master’s degree,” he said,

“and I made very good grades in school,

but the color of my skin devalues all that

when it comes to getting ahead in a company.

I was employed once by a man who paid me half

what he paid a white man who worked

only half as hard as I did, day in and day out.

And he wanted respect from me to boot.

I don’t mean just politeness but that other, 

the bowing and scraping and shuffling,

the moving to the side of the room

when he decided he wanted to be in it.”

His smile had no strain or animosity in it

as he reached to touch my shoulder.

“But you know how I’ve learned to beat it?

Do you want to know how I win every time?

This smile you see is the real thing.”