I’m just using this event to illustrate that a black person can also be caught shopping while black outside the United States. Most of my African American brothers and sisters will nod in agreement when I say that we can be anywhere shopping – yes, just minding our own business in a department store, pharmacy, grocer, etc. trying to spend some money we made, usually working for the man – and get mistaken for the help. 

This happened to me a long time ago in Europe, before globalization made international travel, especially for Americans of color, more accessible to the hordes of tourists now seen globetrotting (in more ‘normal’ times at least).

To be precise, it was 1981 during my first overseas posting in Oslo, Norway as a Foreign Service Officer. I took a long weekend in October to visit a colleague assigned to Helsinki, Finland. Early winter had already begun to fall on the Nordic countries, along with brightly colored leaves. Accordingly, I packed a full-length coat.

One of the to-do things in Helsinki (for a woman) is to visit the Marimekko flagship store. The burst of color of its fabrics inside the shop (see below for examples), in a way, mirrored the vibrant tones of the changing and falling leaves outside. Oranges and reds and yellows abounded in the clothing and on the bolts of cloth that lined the walls.

I quickly eyed a blood-red shirtwaist dress printed with leaves in just those shades. I imagined how the abundant skirt would swish and swirl with my every step and decided that I had to have it. As I fingered the starched, heavy-duty cotton, someone interrupted my thoughts of making a show-stopping entrance in this frock and how I would accessorize it.

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“Could you help me?”

I turned toward the voice and saw it attached to a white, 30-something, blond American woman. Mind you, I had on my coat with a purse on my shoulder.

“I need some help,” she continued.

I wanted to go rude to her face but opted for the silent treatment, looked her up and down, and then walked to my friend and told her what happened, loudly.

“You see that woman,” I started, pointing at the offender. “She thinks I work here. The Finns are some of the palest, blondest people on the planet and plus, I’ve got on a coat! She sees a black person and automatically thinks – salesgirl. Thousands of miles and common sense still can’t separate them from their prejudice and stereotypical thinking.”

By then, the woman had disappeared into the racks of clothing. I bought the dress and huffed out.

Now, I’ll admit that I have confounded a shopper for a seller in the States. And yes, they’ve all been white and yes, I’ve done it on purpose more than once. I like to see the befuddled look of “How could you possibly take me for someone who works here?” When it happens to me, my look is more one of exasperation and yes, anger and offense, especially when it’s so obvious that I am not a subservient worker bee or as Native Americans would say, ‘a mascot.’ (Think the Washington Redskins, the Kansas City Chiefs, etc.)

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late. Before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate. You’ve got to be carefully taught. From South Pacific by Oscar Hammerstein II, sung by a young American lieutenant who falls in love with an island girl during World War II and initially can’t overcome his ingrained prejudice.

I’ll never forget that song because my father taught me the lyrics when I was six or seven or eight. All part of my upbringing and inculcation into what I would face as a black person in the United States of America, and a lesson on the stem of racism and stereotypical thinking. “No one’s born prejudiced,” he’d say. “Someone has to teach it.”

I’ve seen the South Pacific movie many times, most recently a few years ago in Rome where I live with my Italian husband. I started crying almost from the opening credits because I knew that all the dreaminess and romanticism of the film, albeit wrapped in blazing Technicolor, would not outweigh or shroud the embedded unfairness and tragedy. The young lieutenant (pictured below in a still from the movie) decides to abandon his life back home and marry his love, but is killed in action before he can. The main characters, however, will end up together but not after racial strife.

Barely able to speak, I called my husband at his office. “Gaetano, please come home as soon as you can?” I croaked out.

He did and we watched the film together; I wanted him to understand a little more about American prejudice and how national boundaries can’t contain it. He watched in silence, not knowing exactly what I was talking about until the female lead, Nellie Forbush, a Southern belle, runs from her French suitor, a wealthy plantation owner, after he introduces two local young children. Initially, she swoons over them (Aren’t they adorable? Those big black eyes staring at you out of those sweet, little faces) and then asks, “Are they Henry’s? (the butler)”

“They’re mine,” he responds. A widower, he’d fathered them with his wife, a local woman. Nellie is appalled and flees, with her silk organza dress flowing behind her.

I looked at my husband and said, “See! That’s how it is.”

“But what’s wrong with her?” he replied. “He’s got two pretty little kids and he’s rich.”

I had to explain. Since he dipped in the well of a woman of color, she certainly wasn’t going to let him dip in her well. My husband was still perplexed.

“She’d never have children as good-looking as those! She’s not all that.”

So, here’s an Italian man dismissing the looks of what would be considered the most desirable ‘type’ of woman in the States, appreciating the nut-brown offspring of a Frenchman and a Melanesian woman, and puzzled by all the fuss. For him, the optics played a greater role than anything else.