A night at a Berkley bar reveals race in Obama’s America

In the post-election glow of having voted in a black president, it’s a little easier to forget that racial tension is still prominent in Michigan. Especially when you surround yourself with only one race at a time.

On the night after Thanksgiving, I was invited to Berkley, Mich., a predominantly white suburb of Detroit, to visit a friend from high school at a local bar. Over the past year I’ve spent so much time in the city of Detroit, I almost forgot how it was to be on the other side of Eight Mile Road, in the suburbs.

Except for me and the three black people at a corner pool table everyone at the bar was white. I am black at first glance, but like Obama I have a white mother and black father.

I noticed the racial makeup of the room instantly, because in Detroit it’s often the other way around. I also noticed a heavyset man playing pool in a black T-shirt with a Confederate flag across his chest.

No one in my group said anything about it, though I thought it was very visible, so I brought it up. I asked my friends (who are all white) if that shirt bothered anyone. They were quick to call the man a racist and said he was “probably in the KKK,” but then they quickly changed the topic.

I couldn’t let it end there. I approached one of the three black people in the bar. I asked a young man who was playing pool at a table next to man in the shirt if the Confederate symbol bothered him. He said it did, but that he didn’t want to get into a fight “around here.”

There was no reason to start a fight. After all, it was just a T-shirt, and I hadn’t talked to the guy wearing it yet. So I decided to do just that. I approached the man in the flag with a smile and asked how he was doing. He stopped and stared looking surprised and rather speechless. I went on to compliment his shirt.

The surprised look on his face turned to fright and he stepped back two paces.

“It’s not mine,” he said quickly as if I were threatening him. “My friend gave it to me. I’m not a rebel.”

I laughed and said I was just curious about it.

The man looked like he wanted to run. His pool partner just stared on with a grimace but didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t buy it. It’s not mine,” the man in the flag continued.

His face was getting red. I’m not sure if it was out of embarrassment or frustration, so I decided to leave him alone. I shook his hand and wished him a good night.

Within five minutes he and his friend left the bar.

Later that evening one of the three black people in the bar, a girl about my age got on stage to do some karaoke. I overheard one of my white friends say to the other, “She’s so black,” in a scornful tone.

My other friend responded, “She’s ghetto.” I leaned in to ask what they meant by that, but when they noticed I was listening in they changed the topic and avoided eye contact with me for a couple minutes as if ashamed.

These were the people who minutes before were condemning the man wearing the Confederate flag. Furthermore, these are people who voted for Barack Obama and agreed with his message of unity.

But I found that the tension and the mocking go both ways. When I went back to talk to the black people in the bar, one of them asked in a critical tone if I always hung out with so many white people.

I was beginning to see that that my attempts to ease the tension were not doing much. Maybe I had forgotten the level of tension that’s created among mixed groups.

When I got back home to Detroit, I wondered: Was it always like this, or has living in Detroit made me more sensitive to racial issues? It could be that I, like many others, assumed that Obama’s election would somehow change how we deal with petty racial differences.

Obviously not.

More people are talking about race now, but it’s still a topic that is hard to address and makes many feel uncomfortable. We just need to keep talking.