The furor isn’t unexpected. If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone else.
Yes, I am talking about the recent arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Skip Gates on his front porch by a white city of Cambridge police officer. Some of the facts are being disputed, but to me a few things are clear:
Gates has been writing and talking about race for his entire professional life. A week ago, he received the most profound personal lesson about race in America. The intellectual has become personal.
No matter how big, how prominent a black man becomes in America, he will encounter moments of utter and abject humiliation. At those moments, he will rightly blame race and racism. But at those moments, he must reach deep down and find the will to not let the bigots win.
I don’t know Gates, never met the man,, but I couldn’t help but feel that his anger, his righteous anger at that Cambridge police officer, was fueled in part by frustration- after all the work he has done, after all the things he has accomplished, a three-striped cop could reduce him and his Ph.ds to ashes and he becomes just another brother under criminal suspicion.
I believe as part of our education, every black man needs to experience the helplessness of being unjustly handcuffed. It’s a grounding experience; it’s a life-changing experience. Below is an account of my arrest one night in Fort Mill, S.C.
A version of this essay appeared in the St. Petersburg Times' Floridian section.

Handcuffs that won’t come off
By Andrew J. Skerritt
As the light turn from red to green, I lurch forward. Half a block away a white sedan slips into the traffic behind mse, sitting in my lane. The blue lights on the roof of the cab are unmistakable. They are coming for me. I drive using my rear view mirror mostly. What's behind me is more fearsome than what's ahead. That wasn't always the case, not until I got four traffic tickets in one month. Two stops, three tickets in less than one week and you're spooked. You think of what you'll say when the officer comes to your car door, how you'll phrase the apology: ‘I didn't know the speed limit, officer.’
‘Is there a problem, officer? How fast was I driving?’
Each flashing blue light and I am dragged backwards to the Thursday night in February. Every one remembers their first time. The sharp edge , the silver steel bracelet. the powerlessness, the shame. I kept thinking it was a dream. I'm respected. I'm innocent. This was supposed to be Pizza Thursday night and I was driving home. My son sat in the back seat reading with the light on. Pizza pepperoni and mushroom rested on the floor. As we turned around the bend, a police patrol car came flying in the opposite direction. Soon after it passed me , it made a u-turn and fell in behind me. Unperturbed I kept going. I slowed down turned the corner. lights flashed. I pulled over. I sat; I waited.
License and registration. I waited some more. My son wants to know why we have been stopped. I ask the question. There has been a report of a white car overtaking and driving recklessly with no lights coming over the bridge, she replied.
I wait.
Sir you have no insurance. We will have to take you in. Do you have anyone to take care of your son?
I stall, unbelieving. I paid insurance the week before. My wife wouldn’t let our insurance lapse. I stalled further, knowing she would drive up soon and show the officers that we had insurance. Passersby slow down and stare at another black man being stopped by police.
My wife arrives and transfers the pizza and my son to her car. Mine will be towed at my expense. She reaches for her handcuffs. Is that necessary, I ask in protest.
She must follow regulations. I'll handcuff in front, not behind your back, she promised. I was grateful for that a major concession. It made me feel better already.
There is a peculiar view you get of the world from the back seat of a police cruiser. The world seems less safe, smaller, less colorful. It is mostly gray, black and white. But this was my movie, I could choose the colors. This was all a mistake.
But the black dye under my fingernails when I awoke the next morning was real. So was the slow, unbuckling of my belt, loosening my silk paisley tie; removing my wristwatch, wedding bands and chain, posing for the mug shot.
I was quiet and cooperative, even though I seethed inside.
At any moment I expected someone to say it was all a mistake, apologize and let me go home. After all I was a newspaper columnist; my picture appeared in the paper three times a week. They'll know who I am and release me on my own recognizance. I lived in town. I owned a house down the road.
That kind of treatment was reserved for a different kind of suspect.
I'll have to lock you up in the cell until the magistrate arrives, the booking officer said. He should be here around 9:30.
The short walk to the cell empty except for one cellmate who had made up his bed and slept fitfully. I sat on the concrete slab. Inside I wanted to scream, but I remained silent. There was no one to hear me. So I wrapped my soul in the comfort of innocence. But how many others had been brought here before me loudly protesting their innocence only to spend the rest of their life behind bars?
The worst I could do was thirty days in a county jail. But I refused to contemplate that eventuality. I had insurance. I had the card to prove it. I was innocent.
I counted the bars in the cell. I read the hate mail my predecessors left behind for jail guards. Bereft of my watch I could only imagine time. The metal caged my spirit. I couldn't relax. I couldn't sleep. The police officer brought me a blanket. Did he expect me to sleep overnight? I replayed the entire day in my mind. The ifs. if i had used the other route home instead of driving through town. What if I hadn't gone for Pizza? The answers astounded me. In order for me to have been stopped required a series of coincidences, too random to fathom. I was here for a reason. Someone wanted to teach me a lesson. I needed to remember who I was; what I was. No matter who people saw you as, it was who you were that truly mattered. Secretly I kept hoping one of the officer would recognize me. "You're the fella from the newspaper. I like your stories," I waited to hear her say. But she never does. Her eyes remain hard, steely, suspicious. She cuffs me with the practiced indifference of crime wary big city cop. I was her anonymous thug unconventionally dressed in jacket and tie.
She didn't recognize me. I wasn't going to drop names. In the South, being known is, even more than race, everything. If the officer who pulls you over knows your or your family, your chances of driving away with an admonition to ease up off the accelerator increases dramatically. But if he doesn't know you or your kin, you'll help him make quota this month. But how could I claim to be a black man and never been arrested?
The only moments I've spent behind bars were on guided tours of county and state prisons. I had to earn my badge. Every black man had to be arrested at least once. It was a rite of passage. Mine had been delayed. There was no postponing it.
Later that night, the magistrate arrived at the station house. He recognized me, alright. ‘You’re Mr. Skerritt from the newspaper.’
He demanded $350 bail before he released me. I could call a bail bondsman if I needed help. Instead I called my wife. When she arrived, the magistrate sent her back to get exact change. Later, as she drove me home, my son wrapped in a blanket in the back seat, she tapped my knee. Are you doing okay, she asked. Yes, I said. I'll be fine. The sense of innocence wrapped even more tightly around me. salving my sense of being wronged. But it also bolstered the knowledge on that February night that when I walked into that jail cell, I walked through a portal, the one of experience shared by millions of other black men in America. But unlike so many others I walked out unsullied and unbowed by the experience. At the same time, I drove home knowing that each time a police patrol car pulled in behind me, I would always see those blinking blue lights tinged with chrome, the color of handcuffs binding my wrists, humiliating me in public, reducing me to just another, anonymous thug unconventionally dressed in jacket and tie.

Notes and observations

The last month has  been intriguing with all the political and celebrity news. Some brief observations:

The Gov. Mark Sanford affair scandal is sad in  so many ways. Here is a man with big ambitions to be president risking it all on a romantic affair that he knows has no future. Matters of the heart- reason just doesn't work. Can you imagine how miserable it must have been to be at home with his wife and four sons when his heart was in Argentina? That is hell if there is one. 

This is not an attempt to gloat. This kind of failure happens more often than we hear about it.  I'm no fan of Sanford's but I wish him luck in rescuing his marriage, if not his political career. Makes me want to guard my heart more carefully than ever.

Later today some belated comments on the Steve McNair murder suicide.  

Hurricane season 20 years after Hugo

In recognition of the 2009 hurricane season, I'll reproduce an essay which appeared 20 years ago after Hurricane Hugo struck Montserrat. I, like many other ex-pat Montserratians, was sitting around for the phone to ring, hoping in vain for good news from home. After this piece appeared in Gannett Westchester Newspapers, my editors sent me to Montserrat for a week. As the 20th anniversary approaches, I am looking for people who are willing to share their memories of Hurricane Hugo - whether its in the Caribbean or in the Carolinas. Caption information:This is a view of Kinsale from Fort Barrington,Montserrat, about a week after Hugo struck.

Memories of Hurricane Hugo: Waiting for news- Sept. 1989

The tone of my sister’s voice over the phone Friday night was calm, even nonchalant. We’re stocking up. But we’re not boarding up. It’s too much trouble. Insurance would pay for the damage. Anyway our houses are built properly. This isn’t Jamaica, she said.
Those were the last words I heard from home for a week. For the subsequent four days, like hundreds of other Montserrat and Caribbean nationals living in the United States, I havebeen hanging on to last words from home. Words of misplaced optimism.
I talked to my sister just hours before Hurricane Hugo lashed Montserrat with 150-mile an hour winds, high seas and torrential rain. For days afterwards, I waited ,worried and listened to hear word of what was left of my island, my home.
The first twenty four hours were the worst. The early television news accounts of storm damage were dominated by reports from the larger islands - Guadeloupe, Antigua, the U.S Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. There was no news about Montserrat.
I wondered:If Hugo could tear apart Guadeloupe and Antigua, then what could possibly save Montserrat, a hilly, 39-square-mile, pear shaped island which sat between them.
News from Montserrat began coming in late Sunday the mountainous lush green island and its twelve thousand residents took the brunt of Hugo’s fury.
At first the only detailed information came from exhausted amateur radio operators who reported that six people were dead and the hospital, police headquarters and court house had been destroyed. Half of Plymouth, the island’s capital, was reported to be under water.
I thoughy back to my sister’s optimism. This was worse than Jamaica.
Furtive phone calls and hourly news bulletins confirmed my worse fears. Ready or not Montserrat had been hit by one of the deadliest hurricanes to hit the Caribbean in decades.
I called Linelle and Wendel Lee, a Montserrat couple vacationing in NYC, whose return trip was delayed by Hugo. Not knowing what happened to their son, home, and pharmacy had made it nearly impossible for them to eat or sleep.
“You can’t comprehend the size of this disaster,” Linelle said. “I won’t be able to understand until I see it for myself. You can’t get anything specific. You think about it and you cry.”
News of Montserrat’s plight has not been easy to get. A call to the British Consulate, which handles matters dealing with Montserrat, wasn’t much help either. So my wife and I traded updated information with the Lees by telephone.
It wasn’t until three days later that television news reports brought me face to face with reality: Virtually the entire population was homeless, the reports said.
British television provided live footage of the disaster, but I still could hear no definite word about who was safe and was wasn’t. What of my sister, her husband and her three children who had spent part of the summer with me in New York? Were my dad, granddad, grandparents and numerous friends and relatives safe?
My wife, Chris, had reason to be concerned too. Although most of her family lived in New York City, her parents were in Montserrat. Their wood frame house is nestled in the rural northern section of the island, exposed to high winds and susceptible to flooding.
A first time expectant mother, Chris has taken things in stride. She decided she’d worry when the time came. Amid the worry and the wait I knew there was one person , my grandmother, who would not take the approaching storm lightly. At 67, she had experienced two devastating hurricanes in her lifetime. I remember as a child that whenever there was an approaching storm, she would talk about the hurricane of 1928. It ripped the roof off her parents’ house and forced her to put her younger sister on her back and take seek refuge in the nearest church. The hurricane of 1958 was equally devastating.
Growing up, I was her companion on numerous hurricane vigils. Together we braced for storms that always seemed to weaken or radically change course at the last minute. On Montserrat, hurricane warnings are a summer ritual, as much a part of our lives as cricket, calypso and tourists. Hurricanes are to the Caribbean what tornadoes are to the American Midwest.
As a young boy, it was my responsibility to nail the windows shut, stock up on batteries, kerosene and other essential items. Every few years or so a small storm or a distant hurricane would bring heavy rains and strong winds. Trees fell. Corrugated metal roofs flew away. Dry gulches became raging ravines. The inconvenience of life without electricity or running water for a few days was a small price to pay for days off from school or work. I knew my grandmother would take no chances. I feared more for the young, able and inexperienced. Like me, they were accustomed to the hurricane watches and warnings that amounted to be little. To them fallen trees, surging waves and swollen creeks were matters of adventure and fun, nature's spectacles to admire.
They had seen near misses. They saw Hurricane David in 1978 when it glanced Montserrat and devastated Dominica. After so many nea0r misses it was easy for the young to believe that the worst can never happen to them. They were wrong.

My healthcare reform moment

May 2008- My daughter and I pulled up to the skating rink for a Friday afternoon skating fundraiser for her magnet school. For a 7-year- old girl, an afterschool skate party with her female classmates is the ultimate social event. And I am the chaperone, the designated parent for birthday parties and school functions.
The parking lot was almost full. Other parents have arrived ahead of us. We walked through the door and I was about to grab my wallet to pay to get inside, when I noticed the sign.
“If you do not have health insurance we recommend that you not skate. We are not responsible for injuries incurred on the skate rink.”
We had been to this skating rink for parties before. The sign was faded and old, but somehow I had never noticed it. Why should I? In 20 years of employment since I graduated from college, I always had health insurance. Until then.
As I reread the sign, the presidential campaign debate about portability, universal healthcare, single payer system and health care reform immediately became very real. It took two decades, but my ox had finally been gored.
Then the two of us had one of those unforgettable moments between a father and a daughter, man and child. That afternoon it seemed that for a second our roles were reversed. For a second I felt ashamed, powerless to provide for my daughter. I felt like one of those people who I used to look down on. But my shame was soon replaced by an infusion of pride. Instead of throwing the expected tantrum, instead of breaking down in tears over her disappointment, my daughter offered me an olive branch as sturdy as a life raft.
“It’s okay dad,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m not upset.”
We turned around and walked out of the rink and drove home to do something far less physically risky – watch television.
I lost my health insurance the minute I was laid off from my newspaper job. The process was much more humane than many of the lay off horror stories I had heard. I got early notice enough to schedule dentist, doctor and optometrist visits.
The company cut its ties with me on the last day of work. With the paycheck went my health insurance. The HR department offered one option. I could buy COBRAA for me and my family, the letter said. Cost? $950 a month. I was astounded by the absurdity of it. Those who are employed fulltime and have good paying jobs get cheaper health insurance than the unemployed. How was I going to afford COBRAA on my $275 weekly unemployment check?
Unemployment and the lack of health insurance are partners in the sad marriage of our present economic maelstrom. The Kaiser Family Foundation predicts that if unemployment rate hits 10 percent this year, the roll of those with employer sponsored health insurance could fall by 13.5milion people. That could swell the ranks of those with SCHIP and Medicaid could grow by 5.4 million. That could mean another 5.8 million uninsured Americans. Just think that in 2007 when times were good relatively, there were 45 million Americans trying to figure out how to stay healthy without health insurance.
KFF analysts say that every one percentage increase in the unemployment rate represents to a 1.1 million increased in the ranks of the uninsured population and a one million increase in the SCHIP and Medicaid enrollment.
And having a job no longer guarantees you health insurance. Companies that offer health insurance are making employees pay more for less. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that many small businesses are cutting employee health insurance in order to avoid layoffs or just to stay in business. Talk about a blow to employee morale. The bad news seems endless.
But here is the good news.
The stunning numbers of those newly unemployed and uninsured add an unprecedented urgency to the current health care reform debate. For the first time in a long time, enough people are affected by an issue and a forced to pay attention by what happens in Washington.
So what do we do? Hopefully we are beyond another “Harry and Louise” moment. Scare tactics about socialized medicine won’t work this time. It’s one thing to be a conservative Republican denouncing government run healthcare when you have a job and your doctor’s visits are subsidized. That argument holds less currency after you have been sitting at home for a few months and you don't know whether that bump on your son’s arms is just a bruise or a fracture. How about a plan that taxes those who are insured against the day when they might lose their health insurance? We’ve figured out a way to provide income for the unemployed.
This country spends $2.5 trillion a year on health care. Half is from the government; the rest is private. We have the framework for the kind of health system that can meet the needs of an increasingly unhealthy populace. Our problem isn’t one of means; it’s a lack of will.
There are people all over this country who are getting paid to maintain the status quo. They reckon if they stall long enough, good times will return; they hope people like me will forget and move on to the next big distraction.
They’re wrong.
May 2009 On the Friday before Memorial Day, my daughter’s elementary school has another fundraiser at the same skating rink from a year earlier. She’s a second grader. Third grade and its freedom looms. Her girl friendships are as important as ever and so are the parties and out of school social events- like a fundraising party at the skating rink. She has $5; she’s willing to pay her own way. She remembers the disappointment of a year earlier. She jokes with her mom about it.
Now dad has a job; he has health insurance. At the scheduled time we arrived at the rink. I paid her way in; they stamped her arm and I walked in behind her. I didn’t see the sign that blocked my way a year earlier. To be honest, I didn’t look for it. Unfortunately, when I have health insurance, there are some signs I think I can afford to ignore. But that sign I won't soon forget.

Jobless

 The news arrived in a timely and technologically appropriate fashion. It came via a text message: “It’s official. I am jobless.”

She was 30-something, a veteran of the financial services. Wall Street had transferred her from New York to Tampa, North to South, and it has been downhill ever since.

She arrived at work one Monday morning. Come into the boss’office, we need to talk, she was told.

The job she’d thought she would  have until in the end of April  had left town  two months early, outsourced to India - Mumbai or New Delhi, to her what’s the difference.

 Pack your things and leave, she was told.

Thankfully, she didn’t go empty handed: six months salary; two months health benefits. She’s lucky I told her. Some men and women with families and mortgages and children in college are being let go with a month’s pay.

I gave her the "obstacles and opportunities" speech. She  can finally go out and get the job she always wanted. She’ll finally get that teaching certificate. She ‘ll perhaps try to be a social worker. The Department Children and Families needs employees who care about hurting adults and children.

A year ago I heard the same speech as I was preparing to leave the St. Petersburg Times. I didn’t always  believe it intellectually, but in my heart it made me feel better repeating the words: something good will come out this.  Every door that closes means a door is opening. Obstacles birth opportunities.

Those words don’t ever salve the hurt and calm the panic of being fired, but they’re true. And every day someone else needs to hear them - someone like the veteran reporter for a major newspaper chain who started his day interviewing folks at a recycling center. When he walked into the office, someone told him the boss wanted to see him in his office. He walked in to learn he was being let go that day.

“What about the story I’m working on,” he asked.

Forget the story, the editor told him.

Here’s more. I reconnected with an old friend from college this week. He has been freelancing as a photographer since January when he was laid off from a position he held for 18 years. Another former colleague, who had long fled newspapers for the saner pastures of public relations, finally returned my phone call after a month. She had been laid off since February. Her nonprofit employer closed offices and cut staff. They blamed the economic downtown and the sharp drop in charitable donations.

Sounds depressing? I know it is. But this cycle of trouble demands the best ideas, the best innovation, the best originality from all over us. This is a reminder that we can never get too comfortable. That master’s degree? Now looks like a great time to go back to school. That old hobby that has been catching dust in the garage? Time to dust it off.  Those kids stories that you always wanted to write?  Procrastination time is over.

Can’t seem to develop the motivation to get started and get off the couch?

Lace up those sneakers and take an early morning walk; better yet, go jogging. You won't come back emptyheaded.  

I want to hear some of those ideas you came up with while you were out breaking a sweat. Those endorphins have me feeling optimistic for you already. 

The UWI Open Campus Montserrat recently announced winners of the 2009 Creative Writing Competition. Entries were read  by six  judges some local and some international .My short fiction, dead, which was written almost a decade ago when I lived in the Carolinas, won the short story prize. I guess it's time for me to dust off all those other short stories languishing in digital purgatory. 

 Here are the list of winners: 

Poetry

Ease de Pressure by Laura Taylor

Stage 2 Denial by Jamaal Jeffers

View Through Beaded Curtains by Shirley Spycalla

 

Honourable Mention

      Etude by Jamaal Jeffers

            The Last Farewell by Shirley Spycalla

 

Short Stories 

Dead by Andrew Skerritt

He Would Remember Forever by Gordon Buffonge

We Will Not Go Quietly by Laura Taylor 

Honourable Mention

      One Year in Hell by Laura Taylor

      Nubian Journeys: As a Woman by Celia Marshall

The Open Campus will  organise a prize-giving ceremony which will also include the reading and signing of recently published work.   The Alliouagana Festival of the Word, a Literary Festival for Montserrat, will be held Nov. 13 to 15, 2009.  

Excerpt from Dead, a prizewinning  short story by Andrew  J. Skerritt 

The conductor announces each stop. In silence, I scrutinize my fellow passengers aboard the northbound No. Five subway train in Brooklyn heading for Manhattan. I search in vain for a familiar face. I look through a one-way glass. I see them. They cannot see me. I am the dead among the living. Together we ride in quiet isolation. A crowded New York City subway car is the loneliest place on earth.

               I sit in the double seat between the conductor's booth and the rear side door, squeezed between an off-duty transit cop and a Jamaican girl wearing braids. She told me who she was the second she asked the conductor for directions. Seated next to the officer in uniform, I imagine the curved butt of the officer's service revolver digging into my ribs, wrinkling my mauve, double-breasted suit. He kept folding his arms and fingering his piece while looking out of the side of his eyes at half a dozen Puerto Rican-looking youths standing near the door leading to the next compartment. Their boots seem more suited for rocks and boulders than concrete and asphalt. They laugh and jostle each other in a friendly warm up for Times Square. A woman transit cop enters our car and strides down the aisle, eyeing the pocket of Latin energy. The youths fall silent as if on cue.  Within minutes, the train slides further north. Home is lost in the darkness and the cold behind me. I live in a field of strangers. For twenty five years, I lived off Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.

 On December fourth, I moved to Evergreen Estates, a ten-acre development resting beneath the sod alongside the Interboro Parkway. My place is twenty feet inside the wrought iron fence.  Low cut grass and freshly turned earth surround me. Patches of beige-brown clay suggest that new neighbors just moved in. Although I'm not used to the damp, frozen earth, this new place has a certain charm. Each dawn I revel in the mist as it drifts over the Chinese section. Huts and gongs stand gaunt. Like Manchurian sentries, they guard their dead in exile. To the left, in the Jewish section, crows play late afternoon games of tag.  Beyond the wrought iron fences and landscaped berm, Parkway traffic crawls east, where Brooklyn peters out and Queens, bushy and pretentious, emerges. To the west and south, yellow cabs honk their horns as they make their mad rush toward Pennsylvania Avenue. They mean no disrespect to us dearly departed residents of Evergreen Estates. A Brooklyn cab driver without a horn is like an undertaker without a hearse.