Life isn't fair... but it can be better.

Back in the day when my siblings and I were young, my father cured us of telling him things weren’t fair by reciting a little reproof in response. He did it every time we said, “It’s not fair.” He went through a whole routine. 

Nothing made him stop. No amount of whining, “Dad, stop it!” No amount of teenage huffing and exasperated eye-rolling would turn it off. He played through his skit beginning to end, every time. If we were feeling particularly obnoxious, the rest of the family would join in, piling on the child who had made the error of complaining. 

It went something like this:

CHILD: It’s not fair!

FATHER: Life isn’t fair. You can go to a fair. You can have an affair. The weather can be fair. But life isn’t fair.  You can pay a fare. A maiden can be fair. A ball can be fair... or foul. But life isn’t fair. A car can be in fair condition. You can eat good fare. But life isn’t fair. 

On and on he went. 

We stopped complaining that things weren’t fair.

I stayed up really late Saturday night. These days, I feel as bad the next day when I stay up past midnight as I used to after a night of drinking. I knew I should have gone to sleep… I was actually in bed at 11, but then I started reading a new book by Amber Ruffin and her sister Lacey Lamar, You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey. 

In the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests, Amber, a writer on Late Night with Seth Myers, did a few segments on the everyday racism she’s experienced. Like her segments, I assumed her book would be hilarious and heartbreaking… I was right. 

Examples: 

• Lacey, Amber’s sister, was told by an old white guy that he couldn’t believe how well she spoke for a Black person. 

• When she asks in a store how much something costs, she is not told the price, she is told that it is expensive (she once bought not one but two Rolex watches just to see the look on the salesperson’s face). 

• The security guard at her local JC Penny had a vendetta against her and tried to have her arrested for shoplifting at the mall when she’d been in the movie theater next door, not shopping in JC Penny. No one apologized.

  • The actual shoplifter, who had been seen on camera, was 200 lbs heavier and wearing bright yellow bell-bottoms, while petite Lacey wore a summer dress. 

• A white man on a dating app asked her out while his profile showed pictures of a Confederate flag hanging in his home - he didn’t understand why that might offend.

• And not very long ago, the Trump-supporting HR head in her office had her and a Hispanic woman fired for not being friendly enough to the new intern she was introducing around. Stupid as the reason was, it was still a blatant lie. 

I’m also listening to Obama’s A Promised Land. He, too, makes reference to the number of times he was told by well-meaning supporters that they “don’t even think of him as Black” and other insensitive, if not openly racist comments.

These things are happening to people. Every day. This isn’t even about the dramatic injustice of the murder of Black people.  This is about the daily grind of being Black. The indignity of having security follow you around a store (Walgreens is apparently the worst for this). Or sitting with your checkbook out ready to buy a car, only to have the manager take your sales assistant away to help the white couple who just walked in. 

Or having the cops called as you’ve let yourself into your home because someone didn’t think you could possibly live there. Or having the cops called because someone doesn’t appreciate being asked to follow the clearly posted rules. Or… Or… Or… 

While I know these things happen, reading this book makes it more real. More immediate. And more infuriating. This cannot be alright and it cannot continue any longer.

It’s easy for me to forget other people's struggles because, not living in a particularly diverse area, I don’t witness it. But I’m ashamed to say I had a chance to take a tiny, little stand, and I failed. I should have called someone out, but I let my fear of confrontation get the better of me.

Recently, someone complained to me that if her child was Black, the local government would have helped her with a bureaucratic problem she was having - because “they wouldn’t dare not help a Black child”. “It isn’t fair,” she asserted without evidence her statement was true. 

While I felt bad for the situation her child was facing, it’s ludicrous to believe a blond, blue-eyed, talented, upper-middle class child is at a disadvantage because she is not Black. I should have pointed out to her the insensitivity (and likely wild inaccuracy) of what she was saying. Instead, taken aback, I merely changed the subject.

If things are going to change, I need to learn to be stronger. It needs not to be okay to do or say anything that can be construed as racist around me. I can’t be afraid of confrontation. 

Change is hard. And people who are used to advantages will struggle as they see competition increase and opportunities more difficult to attain. Those of us who have had the advantage in the past need to be supportive even if it means we might not have as many wins as before. It’s not unfair… it’s the way it should be. It’s life.

This book is also making me review things I’ve said in the past that may have been inadvertently offensive or insensitive. That’s also a good thing… No matter how passionately I feel about the importance of equality and diversity, I still have work to do. And many things to learn about what I don’t know and have never experienced.

Self-awareness and responsibility for one’s actions are the best place to start to make change.  

I know I have my own work to do, but I also have a lot of questions that we can’t stop asking. A few examples: 

• How can there be so many people in positions of authority who don’t accept the imbalance and inequity inherent in the systems that govern how we live? 

• How can anyone think the system is okay when cops help terrorists walk carefully down the Capitol stairs but drive into peaceful BLM protestors? When cops shoot men in the back or strangle them to death when they pose no threat? 

• How can people work so hard to deny others the right to vote?

The good news is the BLM marches have made racial inequality top of mind. We see progress in Biden's Cabinet, in Amanda Gorman’s success, in shows like Bridgerton. Big steps and little steps will hopefully reverse that strength of the backlash that, perhaps inevitably, resulted from the election of the first Black president.

And we do see the power that comes when the little fish fights back…

I had intended to write this week about income inequality and the need for us as a society to quash our reverence for uber-wealth. There is no justification, no need in the world to have billionaires. 

If everyone’s income was capped at $500 million, Jeff Bezos and all his descendants would still live extraordinary lives of obscene privilege, but we would have $189.5 billion to pay for vaccines or infrastructure or education.  For a real understanding of Jeff Bezos’ wealth relative to the rest of us, check this out (if you haven’t already): https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

Like many people, I can’t help but smile a little thinking of the amateur day traders who stuffed the hedge funds openly rooting for companies to fail. It’s galling to hear billionaires whine that it’s “not fair.” 

These are interesting times… And there are so many problems to fix. I can just hear my dad adding to his diatribe, “A trade can be fair (even when it hurts a 33-employee hedge fund that was hoping a company employing 14,000 people would go under…. An election can be fair (even when the guy I like didn’t win). Skin color can be fair…(but it isn’t better than anyone else's and doesn’t entitle you to anything special in life).”