Three older (and, it must be said, white) men are sitting at the table next to me.  Flip flops. Polos. Baseball hats. Khaki shorts. I am already annoyed with them as they leave their baseball hats affixed to their heads inside the shop. They should know better, and in the grand scheme of things, I know I shouldn’t care.

These three amigos clearly don’t have a care in the world as they while away their morning chatting about the news of the day.

Normally, I enjoy my older coffee shop co-patrons. They are polite, funny, and informed. I love to dip into their conversations. I know I am nosy. But we are in a public space, after all. I’m allowed.

Unfortunately, this morning, this trio has landed on the topic of reparations to African Americans.

Sigh.

They are not quiet about their opinions, inviting anyone without a hearing aid into their discussion, because surely, they must surmise, the whole of the coffee shop would agree with their sound reasoning.

First, they trot out the trope, “I didn’t have anything to do with the slaves, why should I be taxed to pay their descendants?”

Following with, “Also, how would we ever figure out who was a descendant of a slave and who wasn’t?”

And, finishing up in fine fashion, “And, anyway, can’t we just move on, already?”

I don’t know what these gentlemen did for a living before their retirement, but I’m going to bet history professor was not their career of choice.

Like a dog struggling against his lead to get to the cat across the street, my brain is in full battle with my conscience. I want to say something to them, I really do. I should interrupt them, shouldn’t I?

It is in this moment, I know I am failing whatever badge of honor I have by calling myself a liberal. I should know what to do here – what the right course of action is, but instead, I participate in a familiar (too familiar) struggle of how to play a little part in setting the record straight. I’ll cut to the chase – in the end, at least this time, I fail.

My conscience, whom I love way more than my brain, argues (quite effectively, I think): If we don’t call out rude (or, in this case, ignorant) people on their behavior, they will think it is just fine to continue.

My pragmatic brain responds: They will probably “sit-down-little-lady” you, embarrassing you in front of the loud-talking retired lawyer and the other cast of characters who show up at this time every day.

Also, my brain adds: You aren’t going to change their minds. They are wearing their baseball caps INDOORS for Pete’s sake.

The struggle continues.

Conscience: Do it in the name of public service!

Brain: There is no one in the coffee shop but them and the loud-talker and she is so flipping annoying, she’ll probably agree with them, anyway!

Conscience: Take one for the team!

While I am busy trying to satisfy both my brain and my conscience with a pithy comment directed their way, the tall one in flip-flops gets up to announce he, indeed, has a tee time to make. (I am a judge-y person, I admit it. Perhaps it is my training as a social worker that makes me nearly perfect in my assessment of a**holes.)

They stand up and start to shuffle out, unchallenged in their belief that the (white) world agrees with them and they are free to go forth and spew their trumpiness for the rest of mankind to wallow in.

I am left feeling disappointed in myself. Truth be told, I don’t know what I should do in this situation. As a white lady who brands herself a liberal, I know I am more a part of the problem than the solution, because the color of my skin has allowed me to leapfrog over hurdles, because of my ineffectiveness, because, in that moment, I was all bravado and rage, but unsure how to (or whether to) channel it.

Reparations are in the news today because the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing on Wednesday for a bill  that would seek to pay reparations to descendants of slaves. The hearing date marked the Juneteenth holiday, the day, over 150 years ago, when Texas emancipated its slaves.

Lots of pro and against arguments during the hearing, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell echoed my coffee shop golfer boys when he proclaimed, unsurprisingly for this Trump sycophant, that he doesn’t think “reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea.”

At risk of my computer imploding for sharing an article by New York Times columnist David Brooks, he rather nailed my sentiment on the head in his March 2019 column, The Case for Reparations.

In the article, Brooks lays out the case for reparations, citing how the “injury of slavery continues to show up today in the form of geographic segregation, in the wealth gap,” and finally, and in my opinion, the most important part of this whole thing, in the “lack of the psychological and moral safety net that comes when society has a history of affirming: You belong. You are us. You are equal.”

(Full disclosure: I’ve met Brooks when planning an event at the Press Club years ago when he agreed to be on my round table we were doing for a nonprofit fundraiser. I found him immensely likable, even though, in the ensuing years, he lost me with his rhetoric and short-sightedness on nearly every issue that was important to me.)

But, in this instance, his column is memorable for the right reasons.

Many of my ancestors came here from Ireland in the same year that slavery was largely abolished in the United States. I am not African American and seemingly, I don’t have a dog in this hunt. Except that I do and so does every American who benefits from being on the other side of geographic segregation, the wealth gap, and the safety net of belonging. We can’t deny it, no matter how much my golf boys want to try. And yet, we don’t know what to do to help enlighten. I am going to guess attacking them in a coffee shop is not the way, but sometimes, I can’t help myself. And my death stare doesn’t always do the trick.

Alas, my germaphobe just walked in to take the now-empty table and, for the first time, I am not annoyed at his compulsive sanitizing of the chairs and table at which he is about to sit.