After George Floyd's death, my white friend Venmo'd me $30. I sent it back

Her actions felt inappropriate and jarring. I thought about my grandfather, a lawyer who worked with Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, and examined why I felt that way

At the protests in Brooklyn, I walked alongside my friends and felt encouraged by the turnout — then a white woman turned and flipped the police off (REUTERS)

Last week, my graduate school classmate Venmo-ed me $30 for lunch with the text: “bc nobody should have to deal with the news AND cooking." Since then, I have tried to understand why her gesture upset me.

First of all, I did not need the money. I come from a relatively privileged background. I grew up in one of the boutique River Towns in Westchester County. I have never wanted for anything.

Second, I am a black man. She is a white woman. Her money seemed an attempt at reparations, motivated by feelings of guilt after the murder of George Floyd by a Caucasian police officer. The video of Floyd’s death — watched and re-watched around the world — launched inquiries into America’s racist history. Nowhere in these guides for liberal guilt — such as “Anti-Racism Resources For White People" which suggests media, books, movies, podcasts, articles, and the social media handles of recommended organizations to follow — does it say to send a meal to an African-American classmate. That action felt inappropriate and jarring.

That same week, I went to my first protest at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Meeting my white girlfriend and her three friends, I instantly felt like I was on the wrong team. I was at a Black Lives Matter protest on racial injustice with only white people; well-meaning and left-wing, but white people nonetheless. Jittery and uncomfortable, I wanted to leave. But I stayed, observed, and marched through Fort Greene Park, landing on Dekalb, where I saw a moving sight of solidarity.

It looked as though a colony of ants had crawled onto a piece of bread. All colors and ages seemed to be in attendance; most of the groups were mixed. The collage reminded me of my basketball team from middle school. We came from Westchester, deep Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem, the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side, and Riverdale. We bonded over grueling conditioning exercises.

I quickly realized there was no reason for me to feel uncomfortable at the protest with my girlfriend and her friends. We were on the same team, with the same mission: standing up to racism.

Peaceful protesters strode past parked cars yelling, "No justice, no peace." Some drivers flickered their front headlights and honked on their horns. Others leaned against the driver side door clapping with the crowd. Even the two black police officers in the squad car seemed to sink in amongst us, clapping rapturously. Then the white woman in front of me — who I did not know — flicked those cops off. She shouldn’t have been there. It bothered me witnessing somebody attempting to widen the divide.

On my way home, I thought about my grandfather Earl, a lawyer who worked with Martin Luther King Jr. in Florida. My Aunt Robin used to hide behind the living room door with my grandmother, listening in on Dr King, my grandfather, and others planning the 1964 March in St Augustine. The way Aunt Robin told it, when she and her family went to a march, they wore their Sunday best, prepared to die. Aunt Robin recalled another march, sitting on top of my grandfather’s shoulders, looking at all the people amassing in the crowd, and asking him why everybody was there. “So that all people can be free,” my grandfather Earl said.

That was 1964. We are still marching in 2020 so that all people can be free. I wondered what my grandfather would think of the George Floyd video. I searched for something in the footage to make me feel safer in my black body. I’ve done this too many times, mine through a report for wrongdoing on the part of the slain. Find out what they did, I’ll tell myself, and don’t do that. I distance myself from the victim, pretending this could never happen to me.

My mother often reminds me of the threats against someone with my skin color. The last time we spoke, I floated the idea of biking across the country next summer. “Are you sure that’s safe?” she asked. “You’re black.” I told her I’ll be fine. But will I?

My classmate’s charity erased the distance between me and George Floyd. Prep school, college, and graduate school don’t guarantee that I wouldn't escape Floyd’s fate or Rayshard Brooks’. Her money made me confront my vulnerability. After I received her Venmo, I called my mentor.

“She’s not the enemy,” he said over the phone. I agreed with him. My classmate meant well. She knew I was hurting, felt wound-up about the events in the world and made a confused, knee-jerk reaction to give me something back, to buy me food.

I recalled how, years ago, when I was recovering from Adderall addiction, my father, a Cameroonian immigrant, told me, “You can’t run away from your shadow.”

There is only one solution for the outrage pervading the country. America has to walk into its history and emancipate us all. In “The Case For Reparations”, Ta-Nehisi Coates defined reparations as “the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences” allowing for “national reckoning and spiritual renewal.” He proposed former Congressman John Conyers’s HR 40 as the vehicle towards collective healing. The bill addressed “the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865. It called for the establishment of a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery.”

I returned my classmate’s Venmo. Instead I recommend she protest with us, support HR 40 by emailing or calling local representatives and read Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Colson Whitehead’s speculative interpretation of slavery The Underground Railroad, and Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, learning the words that spoke to me.

"If somebody isn’t free, nobody is free," my grandfather said.