Black History Month - Part III

    I feel like I have shared this before. It stays with me, so I share it again.

    At my old building, I was moving through my fifties, perhaps fighting some weariness or angst. It was not unwarranted. I had a younger cohort, who is African-American, and we had some conversations, mostly good. I got him upset when I told him of some positive (what I thought) experiences and interactions with Black history. Like, my family members help uncover unknown and mostly forgotten graves of African-Americans. A couple other things, which I see or saw as positive. He took umbrage, seeing me as a white guy, I guess. 

    To each his own. Maybe it was my tone? Maybe it was where I was then, or where he was. Divorced, with a small child, leaving military after a good jaunt. Me, sort of the opposite. But older. Wiser? Maybe, maybe not.

    I told him that I identified with some of the struggles of the enslaved, or certain Black people who toiled. Perhaps not so succinctly or well said.

    "That's weird," he replied.

    Yeah. Yes, I am weird.

    Sometimes I feel the pains and travails of peoples. Black. White. Brown.

    All of them.