ThrobbingHood
“I’m Sorry for 2025”
It was the early 2000s. The Lake Show was was popping. Nas was God’s Son. The Chappelle Show had just started, The Neptunes were ubiquitous on the airwaves. It was great time to be a teenager.
I had just become a freshman, a care free boy becoming a man, enjoying life and acting a fool with my crew. I had simple pleasures: music, sports and comedy. Everyday was an adventure without a worry about tomorrow.
I knew what racism was but had never experienced it outright. I knew there were certain places you don’t go to. Certain people you don’t associate with. My parents had prepared me but couldn’t protect me from its harsh realities.
I went to a cosmopolitan school, where the structures of racism had yet to shape the perceptions of our friendships. To us, race was a superficial concept that we sought to eradicate through our affinities of hobbies.
However, even our optimism of a harmonious future, could not escape the bloody grasp of our ugly past.
Kayleigh* was your pure uncut white girl. Colombian not stepped on. The definition of a WASP. She went to a private school but we met through a mutual friend of ours.
We hit it off because we both had a passion for music. From Motown, to Stax, jazz, blues etc. and we both played instruments. We would exchange CDs & Vinyls (
) and messages on AOL Messenger ().
I never saw our relationship beyond platonic pleasantries, but it became clear as time went on that she became more than just fond of me. We would fool around and do everything short of popping each other’s respective cherries.
A red flag that didn’t stand out to me at the time was her reluctance to speak about her family. She would mention them briefly and based on her education and their professions, she was clearly a trust fund baby.
Whilst I spoke warmly of my parents and siblings, she refrained from speaking more than one or two sentences about them. But whilst I naively believe she was hiding something, she was protecting me from what I would soon experience first hand.
It was the evening and we would have our now regimented 1 hour phone calls.
Then suddenly, mid conversation-
*click*
I looked at my phone confused. Did someone unplug it?
A deep male voice came on: “Listen! I’ll tell you this once and one time only. I don’t ever want you to talk to my daughter again. I don’t want you to look at her, speak to her, hang out with her again. If I see you anywhere near her, I’ll personally lynch you myself. Do you understand that!?”
I was stunned. Before I could even answer-
*click*
The phone line went dead. I had never heard such visceral anger directed towards me in my life. I was pissed off that I didn’t even get the chance to retort, but angrier that I was threatened by someone I’ve never even met.
Had he been a voyeur this entire time? What does he know about me that I unwittingly revealed? Those 20 seconds were enough to change how i viewed society.
Enough to change from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X. Now every white person I encountered went through my lens of guilty until proven innocent.
I get a notification on my AOL messenger a few hours later.
Kayleigh: “Sorry
.”
I had just become a freshman, a care free boy becoming a man, enjoying life and acting a fool with my crew. I had simple pleasures: music, sports and comedy. Everyday was an adventure without a worry about tomorrow.
I knew what racism was but had never experienced it outright. I knew there were certain places you don’t go to. Certain people you don’t associate with. My parents had prepared me but couldn’t protect me from its harsh realities.
I went to a cosmopolitan school, where the structures of racism had yet to shape the perceptions of our friendships. To us, race was a superficial concept that we sought to eradicate through our affinities of hobbies.
However, even our optimism of a harmonious future, could not escape the bloody grasp of our ugly past.
Kayleigh* was your pure uncut white girl. Colombian not stepped on. The definition of a WASP. She went to a private school but we met through a mutual friend of ours.
We hit it off because we both had a passion for music. From Motown, to Stax, jazz, blues etc. and we both played instruments. We would exchange CDs & Vinyls (
) and messages on AOL Messenger ().I never saw our relationship beyond platonic pleasantries, but it became clear as time went on that she became more than just fond of me. We would fool around and do everything short of popping each other’s respective cherries.
A red flag that didn’t stand out to me at the time was her reluctance to speak about her family. She would mention them briefly and based on her education and their professions, she was clearly a trust fund baby.
Whilst I spoke warmly of my parents and siblings, she refrained from speaking more than one or two sentences about them. But whilst I naively believe she was hiding something, she was protecting me from what I would soon experience first hand.
It was the evening and we would have our now regimented 1 hour phone calls.
Then suddenly, mid conversation-
*click*
I looked at my phone confused. Did someone unplug it?
A deep male voice came on: “Listen! I’ll tell you this once and one time only. I don’t ever want you to talk to my daughter again. I don’t want you to look at her, speak to her, hang out with her again. If I see you anywhere near her, I’ll personally lynch you myself. Do you understand that!?”
I was stunned. Before I could even answer-
*click*
The phone line went dead. I had never heard such visceral anger directed towards me in my life. I was pissed off that I didn’t even get the chance to retort, but angrier that I was threatened by someone I’ve never even met.
Had he been a voyeur this entire time? What does he know about me that I unwittingly revealed? Those 20 seconds were enough to change how i viewed society.
Enough to change from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X. Now every white person I encountered went through my lens of guilty until proven innocent.
I get a notification on my AOL messenger a few hours later.
Kayleigh: “Sorry
.”
