When I was junior in college in Virginia, my then-girlfriend and I decided one night to meet up for a quick snack while studying for midterms. We bought some sandwiches at a 24-hour deli and, rather than waste time going to either of our homes, which were in opposite directions, we decided to eat in her car in a parking lot near a fancy hotel off-campus. We were listening to music and laughing about something when I saw a security guard’s headlights in the rear view mirror, and I stopped laughing as I watched him—a white man in his mid-40s—walk up to my girlfriend’s door and ask her to step out of the car. “Uh, OK,” she said, clearly as confused as I was about what we’d done to warrant his attention.
He walked her away from her car toward his, but they were close enough that I could hear their conversation. He asked her her name, a slight southern lilt lengthening his vowels. She told him. Then he said, “Are you OK? “
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Are you safe right now?” he asked again.
My girlfriend was white. I am not.
I leapt out of the car and screamed, “What the hell did you just ask her?” I wanted to see if he had the resolve to say it again, to me this time.
The security guard turned to face me. “It’s standard procedure, sir,” he said. “I was going to ask you if you were alright, too.”
“I think you’re lying,” I said.
“You can think what you’d like,” he said, a smile creeping up his face. “We can also call the police right now and sort this all out, because y’all aren’t supposed to be here and this is private property.”
I wanted to hit him in his ****ing face. I wanted to take his flashlight from his belt and smash his teeth out, giving him a real reason to call the cops, a reason besides the crime of eating a sandwich in a parking lot.
But I was a 20-year-old brown kid in Virginia. It was late. I was with a white girl. I felt embarrassed, and the thought of being surrounded by more inquisitive white men with pepper spray and tasers and handcuffs and guns only made my face hotter. And so I apologized. “I’m sorry,” I said. “We didn’t know this was private property.”
“Well, now you know,” he said.