Obligations You Never Asked For

As a white woman, I've spent a lifetime being walked home, walked to my car, walked to my door, accompanied at the bus stop. It has not mattered where I lived in the US or how safe I felt the neighborhood was: male acquaintances, even those who barely know me, have invented a thousand errands they suddenly needed to run that coincidentally made sure I was never alone on a sidewalk after dark.

I have never been mugged; I have never had anyone take a swing at me in any context; I have never had anyone try to force me to go anywhere I didn't want to go, even playfully. Nevertheless, I have benefited from a bodyguard made up of almost every man I've known, men who have believed me to be their equal but recognized that I was disproportionately likely to be targeted for violence because of my size and shape. Men who concluded that simply the act of standing next to me on the street might prevent such an attack from ever taking place, who therefore made a point of standing next to me on the street; men who lied to me about whether they were tired or had better things to do, so that I could come and go as I pleased and not be in danger; men who did this even when I was pissed off at them.

I don't know whether I needed their protection. It's one of those things I can never know. The constant reminder that my female-ness supersedes my self-ness in some contexts has sometimes been really annoying. But I also know that whether or not invisible dangers are out there, preying on women, and whether or not I am indeed capable of looking out for myself, it's irrelevant, because I am surrounded by a community that has committed to tilting the odds in my favor, not out of a specific affection for me, but because of a commitment to righting injustice.

In light of what we know of racial profiling by police and by vigilantes, I believe it is now our duty as white allies - especially those of us who are white women and those of us who look like total nerds - to extend the same protection to the black and Arab people we know, especially the men. Not because they shouldn't be free to walk alone, without fear, in all neighborhoods and at all times of night, and not because we would be any more able to rebuff an attack than they could, but because we know they are being disproportionately targeted, sometimes with deadly results, and the very fact of one of us walking hand in hand with them might change the odds.

White people did this before during the civil rights marches. We mingled with the black marchers not simply to show we were unafraid of desegregation, but to make it less likely that someone would fire indiscriminately into the crowd. People still got killed, us and them. People still got arrested. Probably fewer, and probably less invisibly - it's hard to know. What we can know, and what the black marchers could know, is that some of us formed a community committed to evening the odds, to compensate where we could for a world in which justice was skewed.

Justice is skewed now. It's our turn to step up again.

If you're a white woman, start walking your male black and Arab friends home. Start walking your acquaintances home. It's going to feel stupid. It's going to be inconvenient. They're going to try to turn you down. You're going to have to make excuses about how you're just in the mood for some fresh air, or it's what your mama taught you, or any stupid thing. It doesn't matter that you'll probably be "protecting" someone bigger and stronger than you are. It doesn't matter that you know they're gentle and wealthy and suit-wearing and educated and all the other nice things. They are more in danger from strangers. They are more in danger from police. It's not about size anymore. It's not about lurking, perhaps mythical, rapists. It's not about our breasts. It's about guys with guns, picking and choosing who is "scary." It's about skin.

We owe this to our brothers and sisters even if it means for a while we have to practice our Miss America stewardess homecoming smiles and gender performances to advertise how wholesome and American our charges are. As much as we might want to dismantle the patriarchy, we are currently in position to leverage the patriarchy against the patriarchy by conforming to stereotype. Sucks. Necessary.

We're an odd sort of bodyguard. But we're acting in a time that is odd about bodies.