You’re reading the words of a white boy in Harlem. I’ve just returned from a 5am walk through the streets of my…’hood; around Central Park’s brick-walled perimeter and over the cobblestone walkways, lined with ginkgo trees. This is the time when most of the crack-heads have at last passed out on their requisite benches and the delivery trucks are making their stops at the delis, unloading Boar’s Head meats and bagels.

Before I continue, I should make it a point to illuminate my whiteness, as if its reflection isn’t blinding enough: I’m some ratio of English, Irish, German and Jewish. Laugh if you will at the latter two. It is funny. Regardless, I’m a grade A honky and moving to this area from the wonder bread plains of Illinois proved to be more than an experiment in racial relations.

The Midwest, while mildly diverse, is occupied mostly by the ransomed safety of the suburban picket fence, the gun under the bed and the ever-so-multicultural phrase; “I have black friends.” It was an interesting conversational insertion: “My black friend, Jamal – he’s so funny!” We crackers have this way of taking explicit pride in our lack of racism. We want to make sure that everyone knows just how far from racist we are. So much so that if you’re black, Indian, Chinese, or anything likely not to have a “son” suffix slapped onto your last name, you’re bound to have your ethnicity planted firmly before the word “friend”.

I won’t make the pretense that I chose to move to Harlem, out of all the areas in Manhattan as some sort of learning experience. This was the only apartment that any broker would give me, what with a credit rating jokingly nicknamed The Hindenburg and a laughable life savings that would buy me dinner, some shoes, and maybe a few odd pieces of candy. On a good day.

And there I was, suddenly a racial minority.

And I was scared shitless.

“I’m gonna die.”

“No one here is going to laugh at my Danger: Educated Black Man t-shirt.”

My first lesson was in that of body language. In general, at least in my neighborhood, black people are much more aware of their bodies than us whiteys. They use their bodies as instruments of communication and it is, indeed, a language all to itself. It’s intimidating at first. The news media has done a fine job of pounding into our skulls that every African American youth wants nothing more than to pull the last vespers of life from every innocent Caucasian that crosses his path. Combine that with the festering internalized guilt that all American whites feel in regards to slavery. Further add the fact that I have blue hair.

My life became a sort of race to and from my apartment. In my paranoia, I would get my groceries downtown, never setting foot in one of the local stores or delis and play the no-eye-contact game from the train station to my stoop. In retrospect, I must have looked like a complete nimrod, which must be why T-dawg stopped me that day. Yes. T-dawg. I’m not making that up.

T was my first friend in Harlem. He stopped me with a push as I was skittishly vamping my way home and said, “Blue Meanie, where you runnin’ to alla time?” I don’t remember my response. I fumbled over words while trying to see if I could spot a gun on his person. Recognizing my ploy, he opened up his coat to let me know what a fucknut I was being and then introduced himself. He’s a slam rapper. The eaves above the corner deli are his “beat” and he thought that I had a lot to learn about my neighbors.

I spent the day with him, being introduced around: To Mommi, who ran Food World; to Mac, the 85-year-old veteran, who sells hot sausages and gyros down the block; to Kylie and Krysta who, well, who do a lot of jump-roping. I was immersed that day in the genesis of so many of the stereotypes that we white people hold and it was more than an odd sensation. I’d spent the greater part of my life trying to get beyond them and here I was, escorted by a self-proclaimed “thug” named T-dawg, being introduced to black girls with pig-tails, skipping rope and women with gargantuan weaves and fingernails that would make Freddy Krueger scream like a pussy.

Confusion set in, intermixed with a deleterious sense of wonder. These were, indeed, my new neighbors and while I was slapped in the face with how many of these stereotypes did have their roots in reality, I was also overwhelmed by how their spirit was so far off the mark. Harlem, more than any other habitat that I had known, was a true community. If I was $1 short when buying a sandwich at Food World, Mommi would simply wink and give it to me. If someone was grilling ribs for their family on the sidewalk as I walked by, I was offered a heaping portion, just for living in their building. If anyone was in need, 20 hands leapt to facilitate that need. As T-dawg explained; “The cops never gonna look out for you. The mayor never gonna look out for you. So we gotta look out for each other.”

Tru dat.

Before he moved in December of ‘01, I had the chance to smoke a big, fat reefer with T-dawg on the roof of our building and watch the sun go down over the East River. We’d been through the cacophony of the falling World Trade Center and come out unscathed. We’d helped to organize our neighbors to provide food and water, even couches and beds for those making the on-foot exodus uptown that day, when the trains weren’t running. It was the day when, despite the terror, I had finally felt that, yes, I was home. I’m a Harlemite and this is my place.

There, on the roof, awash in swirls of cannabis smoke, I blurted out a quote that I’d randomly memorized from a book by naturalist Edward O. Wilson:

“My people, I thought. My people. And what else lay hidden deep within my soul?”