Rating: NNNNN
For a couple in love, a Sunday stroll is a walk in the park. Passersby smile at them, they smile back – the world just loves lovers!
But for Marcus and Rachel, that stroll is more of a dash.
You see, Marcus is black. Rachel is white and Jewish. Now, this union is probably only illegal in Arkansas, and they can deal with the guys in the white bedsheets and those who swat at the air in manic salute.
But the guilt they feel – that’s something else.
His guilt has Marcus convinced that every black woman they pass has a curse on her lips especially for him. “Un-huh, another brotha living on the sunny side of the street.” “What’s the matter, black girl not good enough?” “Et tu, Brotha?” “Uncle O.J.!”
He’d rather look down or up, or dig around in his pocket for some important something-or-other, do anything but face their eyes and his guilt.
He could preach all day about “the Man” and racism, but with “the Man’s” daughter on his arm, who’s listening? Her picture paints a thousand words, none of them very good.
And what does his choice of girlfriend say to the black youth of today: you’re nobody till somebody loves you – somebody white, that is? Marry up, Brotha, marry up?
But he’s made his bed with Rachel, and there they lie, not because a black girl wasn’t good enough, he thinks. Or because Rachel wants to hurt her mother.
But because they fell in love.
Some blacks just don’t buy that. “You don’t fall in love, you choose your love. You make the decision.” Marcus gets the point. That’s the problem.
If only he were like those brothas for whom a white woman is the greatest trophy a man can claim – the alpha and omega. And let’s not leave out the sisters plenty of them are eager to hold up their loving cups in a show of victory.
Yet that’s an attitude Marcus just can’t cop, not when it seems that every brotha walks with a white woman, while too many sisters walk alone.
But, Marcus, life’s so damn short, with so few Sundays. Lose the guilt. Grab Rachel’s hand and hold your head up. When you pass a sister, look her in the eye, then smile, because a black woman is not invisible.
