How I resolved a misunderstanding with a friend that was based in unmeant racism

The Fight That Strayed Between Us
By Tova Gabrielle

Dwumah, whose name in Ghana means, “Endless helper,” is the most genteel friend I have. Until our fight it never occurred to me that besides his fulfilling the spiritual imperative of his namesake, he has to be genteel: he’s male, big, and he’s black.
Another of his four names, “Boampong,” (“Brilliant”) shines through him when he talks and works. I often visit Dwumah in his basement workshop where I sit in an overstuffed chair, writing on my laptop while he builds computers. “Dwumah, listen to this!” I’ll say and proceed to read aloud my latest piece of humor, to which he will typically roar with laughter….
Now, while tensions between friends do arise, I was unprepared for the complexity and sudden intensity of our misunderstanding. It seemed to unfold before us as if from a script. The props were my modem and his shop, and the script was not something I would have thought belonged in our friendship.
The scene opened as I, a white middle-class, middle aged female, stood at the top of the basement stairs in a ranch house in the affluent college town in which we both live. I had been frantically looking for my external modem that went with my laptop and which I realized I must have left in his shop the day before. Dwhuma’s shop is adjacent to his den, in which he sometimes sleeps:
It was early when I poked my head into the basement. A light was on in his room but I didn’t see him in his bed from where I peeked on the stairs. Walking past his lounge, I heard him voice a friendly “Tova”. Normally I would have paused and spoken happily with him, but on this particular day I was feeling anxious. I said, “Hey. I’m looking for my modem.”
Dwumah jumped to his feet, threw a shirt on over his pants and began looking; all the while saying he was sure it wasn’t down there; that I’d not had it the day before. I said “yes,” I’d brought it down.
He began looking around while insisting I’d not brought it, and stopped and complained, “Tova, you woke me up!” While this response might have been typical of most people, the edge in his voice was unlike him. And besides that he’d called me early to borrow my car on several occasions. We’d had a rather extensive favor-swapping friendship. I said, defensively, “Oh, well, then why was the light on?” and left, feeling hurt and confused; I fretted to myself that he seemed—what was it? —Perhaps a bit secretive? Two hours went by while I returned home and searched for the modem, concluding it HAD to be down there where I’d left it. So I went back to his house and waited for him to get up so I could look again. He was in the driveway, just leaving, and I ran up to him to tell him I had to look again. He bellowed, “WHAT?”, and stomped into the house as if I had demanded he produce it. I wasn’t. I was so put off by his irritability I wondered if he either took it, or was angry because he imagined that I thought he’d taken it. In fact, the thought had nagged at me the hour before. But I mentally reviewed our former interactions and reminded myself firmly that he was not a taker but an endless giver, as his name so accurately depicted. I forced the idea out of my mind that because he was black and male and living in a white world, he might have some secret life or some such nonsense.
Yet when I saw how angry he was becoming because I insisted I’d left the modem down there, I just couldn’t understand what he was protecting. I said, “Look, it has to be here! What is the big deal?”
When he said that he was going to be “really angry” if I found I’d left it at home as he suspected, I felt misunderstood, cornered or threatened. Then it occurred to me that maybe that was how he was feeling.... But internal pressure telling me not to trust a black man outvoted my insight. While I hated myself for thinking this it seemed a reasonable concern.
I found myself saying, “LOOK, it’s got to be down here… unless somebody took it!”
The sinking feeling in my gut, however, disagreed with my own words. If it could talk it would have pointed and yelled, “Racist!”
Dwumah froze. He stood very still and breathed, “OUT”, pointing at the stairs.
I wasn’t afraid. I was heartbroken when I turned and walked upstairs. I sat on the living room couch and after a while, I knew what to say.
I walked to the top of the stairs and called down, meekly, “Dwumah?”
“Yes?” he answered mildly.
I ventured down a couple of steps. “I have bent over backwards to earn your trust and friendship....”. I moaned, “ I don’t think you took it if that’s what you are thinking.”
Dwumah softened immediately, “look, Tove, I’m sorry, it’s just that you’re talking to me like….’ Do this, do that’….
In my mind I felt I could fill in an unspoken word, “Boy,” or was it “Nigger”?

“I’m so sorry,” I said, weeping….


I rummaged around and he did also, and when I found it under some papers of mine I said nonchalantly, “Here it is.” Dwumah grunted something and there was an uncomfortable feeling between us.
Somehow, though, we found the skills to forgive each other. We hugged. I kissed him on the cheek and then drove home imagining how he’d gotten blamed for just this kind of thing time and again and that he’d cow-towed to expectations of his endless help without question, as if we were doing him a favor by letting him live in our town. I thought to myself that unlike I, Dwumah HAS to prove himself daily. Even then, he knows that at any moment he could be accused of something he didn’t do; be judged. And I felt ambiguously aware that my inherent white privilege protects me from such daily worries.

In retrospect I reflect on how I think to myself that I know better, as if I am above racism. After all, I have taken training in understanding the complexity of white privilege and how it affects false beliefs…. And certainly I have learned that people of color have much more reason to be afraid of “messing” with the more privileged and widely represented race. However, knowing all of this didn’t stop me from being sucked under the tide of an unspoken fear or expectation of betrayal.
Mistrust Ruled: There was so much that was beyond us, pulling us in; something invisible and sticky had been palpably hanging there, something dangerously thick, threatening to crowd out the good times we’d shared, to overlay all that laughter and stories in muck. The script for our fight was older by far than both of our ages put together; and complexly, confusingly, seductive.