When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories

Central Park Samaritan

© Natalie Angier, photo by Gary Orloff 79 Central Park Samaritan Natalie Angier My friends and I were in Central Park on a splendid weekend afternoon in August of 1970, down for the day from our cruddy Bronx neighborhood and now sprawled on the grass of Sheep Meadow, eating hot dogs and potato chips and arguing loudly. We ranged in age from twelve to sixteen, and we were a multicultural jambalaya: there was Ann, a surly, freckle-faced Irish girl who eventually would come out as a lesbian; David, a Greek boy with a Greek god’s beauty and a Socratic taste for other males; Ritchie, a lithe and long-lashed Puerto Rican for whom I quietly, urgently yearned; Harold, tall and black and self-possessed , who could be as sweet as morning one moment, distant and sarcastic the next; and me, half-WASP, half-Jew, abrim with revolutionary vinegar. We all considered ourselves avant-garde, street-hard, and spitpolished . We liked the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Joshua Light Show. We smoked grass and cigarettes, and popped amphetamines when we could get them. When we couldn’t, we hyperventilated until we saw light shows of our own. 80 N ata l i e A n g i e r Oh, we were hip all right, and we agreed on many things—with one big exception. I was my mother’s daughter, which meant I was a budding radical feminist, while my friends had nothing but scorn for the movement they derided as “women’s lip.” So that day in Central Park, we were squabbling about feminism, four against one. As I struggled to articulate the need for a Women’s Rights Movement, I felt flustered, hostile, and betrayed. Even Ann, my best friend and fellow non-fellow, was sneering at the very idea that women and girls had any valid complaints . As far as she was concerned, most women were spoiled rotten, and those who weren’t were “flakes” or “bitches.” I was about to give up, or maybe burst into tears, when I noticed that a black man in his early twenties was standing by our blanket and listening to the discussion. Finally, he knelt down and began talking. “She’s got a point,” he said to the heckling quartet. “Women have a raw deal in this society. They don’t get paid as much as men do for the same work; they’re hassled when they walk down the street; they’re told that women shouldn’t be doctors or lawyers or anything but housewives . Do you really believe that women are inferior? Do you really think that your friend here is inferior to you?” He jerked his chin toward David, who’d been the noisiest of my adversaries. David’s cheeks turned flamingo pink. He was too embarrassed to speak, as were the others. For a few magic moments, the young man continued to defend the women’s movement, with a thoughtfulness and eloquence that put my prior sputterings to shame. Then, without telling us his name or why he cared enough to join the debate in the first place, he stood up and waved good-bye. My hero. My black white knight in shining armor. Three decades later, and I still feel a swell of gratitude when I remember the stranger who came to my rescue. He had just the right mix of credentials to trounce my critics. He was older than any of us and he was male, which gave him not only the natural authority that accords to men, but also a presumed disinterest and objectivity—he had nothing to gain personally should feminism succeed. At the same time, he was black, which meant he knew about oppression. He wasn’t being patronizing. He wasn’t stepping down from a place of privilege and presumption to lend a small, snarling girl a hand. As he saw it, and spoke it, the women’s liberation movement was C e n t r a l P a r k S a m a r i ta n 81 like the Black Power Movement, or like the nascent American Indian Movement, an expression of the innate human thirst for freedom, justice , and respect. How can you mock this desire in any one of us, without making a mockery of us all? The civil rights movement and feminism have a long...