Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate

So, there was a bit of a kerfuffle the other day at the Garden Center...

My usual kerfuffles usually consist of old white women telling me I am incompetent because I don't know the exact strain of hydrangea they are looking for, or for running out of bug-killing spray...However, this one was unique.

Two men entered the store a bit in a scurry, and after a bit of browsing, one began to shout to another from across the store, "you gotta bring that shit in here because we gotta see what it looks like... nah, don't give me that shit! You see this? This is a piece of shit." I grew more alert.

Eventually, they demanded to know what kind of discount they would get for being a Landscaping company. My coworker informed them we did not know, and that they would have to go through corporate. They were not happy with that answer.

Next, they proceeded to rummage through our products, pulling trees out from their slot into the walkway, just to see what it looked like. Understandable. Then they pulled a few shrubs out. Next came some vines. Until 17 plants were scattered throughout the store's walkways, leaving myself and other customers unable to move our carts (or our bodies for that matter) through the store. Walk two feet forward, and you would be stopped by a 15 gallon tree. Two feet backward, and you would be stopped by a 5 gallon shrub. It was inescapable.

All while I was on a journey from the back of the store with a 120-pound pot for a customer on the phone who had been on hold for nearly a half an hour. You could say I was in a hurry.

"Emily, where are you?!" my boss asked on the radio.

"On my way back up, just give me a moment... shit!" I rammed into another plant with the cart I couldn't see 2-feet in front of.

"Okay, well, come back ASAP I have other things to do," my boss retorts, understandably, because cashiering is my job.

I somehow finagle my way to the front, and the two gentlemen were in line, with one thing in their hand and none of the plants they had pulled out. Furious, I mustered calmly, "Do you mind putting back the plants you got out? They're in the..."

"I'm not gonna do that shit! That shit is YOUR job!" The man yelled. It was only at this moment, when I was questioning why he was so angry, that I realized he was black.

"I seen you, following me around the store like you was the POLICE! Well, guess what? I see you- you hate Black, and I hate White. We the same, we equal now."

My boss took over the interaction at this point, because I was on the phone with the customer on hold for 30 minutes. I was shaking. He turns to my manager.

"You know, she a white supremacist! You should tell her to leave that shit at home with her husband. That way she and Donald Trump can make America great again! You should fire her," he tells my boss.

My boss muffled a chuckle, as he encounters racists every day, so this was nothing new for him. "Yeah, I know. Don't worry, she's only a cashier." he says to de-escalate the situation. I was hurt.

The man taps his finger up at the window in front of my face, "you hear me? Leave that white supremacist shit at home with yo husband!"

I finished with the customer I was on the phone with, hung up the phone, and tears came uncontrollably.

"I'm going on lunch," I called out. I clocked out and ran out of the store. I called James, sobbing.

I was afraid they were going to come after me.

"I... am... not... a white supremacist!" I sputtered. "Baby, what happened?" James asked. I told him the situation.

I said, "You know, I don't think I would be crying if he didn't accuse me of being a Trump supporter!"

My head was reeling... all the time I spent working for Amnesty International... knocking on 80+ doors a day to unveil the atrocities the Trump Administration has committed, the heinously racist acts against Mexican immigrants, people of color... the time I spent in college, researching, writing, and presenting on America's responsibility in the Syrian Refugee Crisis... all of the social media posts I scrub to rewrite just so they a politically correct. It was as if all of this was taken away, scrambled into a cake, and thrown at my face. The frosting left its residue for the remainder of the day.

When I got home, I went on a long run. And then it hit me why this was so revealing: when I see our average customer (generally old, white, straight couples), I automatically assume they are a wealthy racist who hires immigrant gardeners to do their dirty work. I am curt and short with them, nothing charming. When people of color come in, however, I assume that since we are living in a system of governance that actively works against them, that they have had enough. So, when some of them only carry cash, and I let them know that we do not take cash, I offer to pay with my card and take their cash. It's some sort of money-laundering, I know... but I would have felt so bad to decline elderly grandmas who barely speak English the joy their plants bring them. However, when white customers don't have cash, I don't pay. I say sorry and bid them good day.

WHAT KIND OF HYPOCRITE AM I?!?!?!?! I thought to myself.

At the end of the day: discrimination is discrimination. No matter what political agenda you are trying to fulfill, stereotyping someone because of their appearance will never be equality.

This is so hard for me to realize after researching the injustices America has incurred on third world countries, on immigrants, on their own citizens of color.

My question to us all is: how can we have equality when the playing field in uneven to begin with? How can we stop assuming and stereotyping when SOMETHING had to make it this insidious of a system in the first place?