Trials and Tribulations

Benjamin Trnka

As interesting and useful asset-mapping was, it was also an uncomfortable experience. I know that I already stand out in the community – for the simple fact that I’m white and working in a predominantly black neighborhood – but equipped with my camera and notebook, I (along with the rest of the team) was greeted with mixed responses in the community.

One elderly woman seemed skeptical to hear about our involvement in the community, but after walking with her and explaining our summer plans, she seemed to warm up to the idea. The owner of one of the grocery stores we toured was immediately skittish and pushy upon my arrival, but after learning that our group is University-affiliated suddenly changed his tune and became extremely hospitable and helpful. But who really stood out were the three guys that drove by us as we headed back to our school.

“Hey – f*** you!” they yelled at us as we crossed the street … without any provocation. But in some way, maybe we did provoke them. After all, we were a group of strangers taking notes in a community, and obviously university-affiliated (many people guessed this before we even introduced ourselves). It’s no wonder that people were suspicious of us. I’m just frustrated by the fact that this one group of guys didn’t even give us a chance. Not even a chance like the old lady gave to me, to explain myself and help assuage her fears. The girls were equally surprised and frustrated when they heard from us what happened.

“It’s not like we were doing anything wrong; we’re just trying to help out” stated one of the girls.

“If I had seen them, I would’ve given them a piece of my mind!” exclaimed another.

We all agreed that it wasn’t everyone in the community would react like this to us, but it is certainly something that we will continue to face as we interact with community members on our own.

Taking a line from David (from a slightly different context, but the sentiment still holds true): I wish that there was just some sort of gesture I could make, phrase I could quickly say, so that community members don’t immediately jump to the conclusion that we were judging them and imposing our own ideas. But perhaps that is exactly part of the challenge we anticipated when starting this summer and will continue to face– the challenge of showing people that we are genuinely interested in helping them help themselves, with no ulterior motives.

This is a challenge I’m willing to take on, and I believe is important to master. It takes time and visible actions to build up that sort of trust in a relationship, trust that we saw modeled by community leaders such as Sam Binion and others that have a huge head start on us with developing community relations. I’m just hoping that our team can begin building up some of that trust in the weeks to come, and remain sensitive to how we may be perceived, so that our work can remain sincere and effective.