You People
Notes on Black folks minding their business
Yesterday, I went to dinner with my sister and my parents.
My sister and I got there first and stood near the hostess stand waiting to let them know we were a party of four. There was an older Black couple waiting too. A few minutes later, they were seated ahead of us.
At the time, I don’t even think we paid much attention to them.
Not in a rude way. They just looked familiar. Like people we’ve seen our whole lives. A Black couple out to dinner after church on a Sunday afternoon.
Then I felt somebody tap my shoulder.
An older white man standing behind us nodded toward the couple and said, “You people sure can dress.”
And whew.
Silence.
My sister’s mouth dropped open immediately. Mine probably did too.
I looked at him and said, “Wow. Us people?”
Then came the laughing. His, not ours.
One of those little laughs people do after saying something they know they shouldn’t have said out loud. Like maybe if he laughed first, we would too.
We didn’t.
And honestly, the whole thing happened so fast I don’t even remember what he looked like now. I just remember the feeling of it. The weirdness. The interruption of it all.
Actually, that’s not true.
I remember the hat.
I could almost guarantee he voted for that man. His hat was burgundy instead of red, but close enough.
Because we were just standing there waiting for dinner.
That couple was just standing there waiting for dinner.
And somehow this old man managed to turn a completely ordinary moment into a reminder that there are still people walking around dividing the world into “us” and “you people.”
Eventually my parents got there and we started telling them what happened. That’s when my sister said, “Baby… they were casket sharp.”
And listen.
She was absolutely right.
The woman had on a beautiful dress and matching hat. The man wore a suit with the slightest shimmer to it when he walked. Just sharp. Put together. Like they cared about leaving the house.
I think what’s stayed with me most is that my sister and I didn’t really discuss what they were wearing until after the interaction happened. We noticed them differently once somebody else made them into “you people.”
Perhaps that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.
How quickly people tell on themselves.
How quickly an ordinary moment can shift.
How exhausting it is that some folks still move through the world seeing themselves as separate from everybody else.
And still, that couple sat down to dinner looking beautiful anyway.
There’s something there.
I don’t fully have language for it yet, but there’s something about Black people continuing to show up fully as ourselves in a world that keeps trying to reduce us to categories. Something about softness and dignity and shimmer and matching hats on a random Sunday afternoon.
Something about us continuing to be human in public.
I didn’t give him some brilliant response after that. I didn’t need to.
In the words of my grandmother, “Lord forgive me if I’m wrong…”
…but that man is one foot in the grave anyway.
LOL beautifully ended. some nerve. you’re better than me, I would’ve gave him the side eye of disgust
My response: You people don’t 👀 bad yourselves, love the 👗 dress and the suit. I would say we all dress beautifully. All the while smiling 🙂 pleasantly.