Zoom seems to be all around us, but what a marvelous tool for dealing with the pandemic.
Thanks to Zoom, I joined a group of over 50 people from all across the country who read and discussed “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson.
“Caste” is her study of America and race as seen through the lens of India’s strict and long-standing system of castes, those nearly immutable class distinctions based on “the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups” and grounded in ancestry. Wilkerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and “Caste” is currently number 6 on the New York Times Best Seller List for hardbound, nonfiction books.
Toward the end of the book, she tells a powerful story about living in an affluent, mostly white, suburban neighborhood. On the surface, the story is about a plumbing problem, but underneath, it is about Wilkerson and the plumber.
It was December 2016; she had discovered water in the basement and called a plumber. He arrived wearing a MAGA cap, “his belly extend(ing) over his belt buckle … and stubble was poking through his chin and cheeks,” all the negative stereotypes that are out there! From his reaction when she answered the door, he had not expected her to be Black. As she led him to the basement, she explained that her husband had died the year before and that he normally handled things downstairs. He “shrugged and said uh-huh.”
He first suggested the sink had overflowed, but Wilkerson was skeptical and said it never had overflowed before. She then suggested the sump pump. He looked at it and said it did need cleaning out but made no move to do that.
“I was steaming now,” Wilkerson reported. “He had come up with no answers, shown no interest, and now it appeared I was going to have to pay him for doing nothing.”
But then, “Something came over me, and I threw a Hail Mary at his humanity. ‘My mother just died last week’ … ‘Is your mother still alive?’”
He answered, no, she died in 1991 at age 52. He went on explain that his father was 78 and living in a nursing home.
Wilkerson observed, “You’re lucky to still have your father,” to which he replied, “Well, he’s mean as they come.” Extending the conversation, she said, “You miss them when they’re gone no matter what they were like.” He replied, further extending the conversation, “How about your mother? … How old was she?”
They chatted on a bit longer, the two of them standing there in the wet basement: she sharing that her mother had been sick for a long time but died much older than the plumber’s mother; and he sharing that he had an aunt, on his father’s side, who at 80 still smoked and enjoyed a taste of beer occasionally.
After this unplanned exchange, “his face brightened,” and he went back over to the sump pump and cleaned it out and then began moving furniture around until he found the leak. It was the water heater! He was “jubilant,” Wilkerson observed. “How different things had been just minutes before.”
There’s more to the story, but notice: when did their — at first, icy — relationship warm up? It was when Wilkerson threw her Hail Mary. At what? His humanity: “My mother just died last week,” and then showed her own humanity by asking him, “Is your mother still alive?” Both of them extended the conversation. And listened.
They had ceased to be mere representatives of opposing groups. In the space of a few minutes, they learned that both had lost their mothers, both missed them, and both had some longevity genes in their family trees.
Several weeks ago, I wrote about an East Tennessee activist, Whitney Coe, who was — as she put it — “tended to” lovingly (by people she was quite sure had not voted as she had in November) while she was in the emergency room with her injured daughter. The experience changed her and opened her heart so she could see them as individuals much like her and not as mere data points.
So, here’s a challenge. Look for turning points like these: in your conversations, in stories you hear, in stories you see played out on television or in books. Collect them. Hold them close. They are the work of our “better angels,” invoked by Lincoln, the source of our hope for the “beloved community,” invoked by King and the foundation of that “more perfect union” envisioned by the Constitution.
Dick Conville is a retired college professor and longtime resident of the Hub City.
