You Don’t Have a Right to Be Above Suspicion

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In my freshman year at Buffalo University (1979), I lived on the sixth floor in one of the towers in the Richmond Quad.

Because I lived on the sixth floor, I naturally used the tower’s elevator a lot. And I’ll never forget the day I got on this said elevator and became the victim of ugly, unmitigated sexism. It was a day like any other. I was returning from class with a couple of my floormates. We entered the tower’s elevator on the ground floor, and we were the only people on it when it began its ascent to the sixth floor. Then the tower’s elevator stopped at the second floor and the door opened. A young lady we never saw before stepped forward with her head down in a book. And, then, as she was just about to enter the elevator, she looked up. The sight of three young men left her aghast and visibly shaken. She stepped back into the hallway and nervously informed us that she would wait for the next elevator up.

Why was she afraid to enter the elevator with us? Would she have waited for the next elevator up if we were young ladies rather than young men? Why did she assume that we were a threat to her mental and physical well-being just because we had male plumbing?

Sadly, this wasn’t the last time I became a victim of such loathsome hate. In the late 1980s, I had a second job working the night shift at a local supermarket chain’s warehouse. On occasion, three of my co-workers and I would travel to a nearby chicken joint for dinner during our meal break. One night, on the way to this chicken joint, we got pulled over by the cops for no reason. The cops wanted to know why we were in that neighborhood, which happened to be predominantly black. After we explained that we worked at the nearby warehouse, provided our supervisor’s name, and revealed our reasons for being in the neighborhood (hunger and a desire for fried chicken), the cops let us go.

Again, why were the cops suspicious of us? Would they have pulled us over if we were four black dudes driving in a black neighborhood rather than four white dudes? Why did the cops assume we were in that neighborhood for nefarious reasons just because we had white skin?

Let’s Get Real

Did the young lady who refused to get into the elevator with us do anything wrong? Hell no. Did the cops who pulled us over do anything wrong? Again, hell no.

Let’s get real. That young lady wasn’t an X-Woman and those cops weren’t X-Men. In other words, they didn’t have superpowers that allowed them to read minds and distill intentions. All they had to guide their decisions was experience and incomplete knowledge, and that experience and incomplete knowledge told them, for good reason, to be wary of us.

When the “biased” elevator incident occurred, it was less than two years removed from the release of the movie Animal House, a movie that glamorized the boorish and sexist behavior of a bunch of drunken college frat boys. And, sadly, too many members of my tribe—male college students in the late 1970s—not only engaged in such boorish and sexist behavior but also viewed engaging in such behavior as a badge of honor. How the hell was that young lady supposed to know that my floormates and I were perfect gentlemen, that we hadn’t embraced the “Animal House” mindset when it came to women? Again, she couldn’t read minds. She wasn’t an X-Woman. If it were my daughter or sister in that situation, I would have wanted her to do the exact same thing.

Now, at the time of the “biased” traffic stop, crack cocaine was a new phenomenon causing a lot of problems in the black community and it engendered a lot of heartfelt pleas from the chattering class to “do something” about the illicit drug trade. “Doing something,” in turn, meant being on the lookout for known drug users (e.g., young white males driving through a black neighborhood at night). Those cops were thus doing their jobs. They were trying to mitigate a drug trade that was bringing all sorts of mayhem to that black community.

Life Is Fair

Most people view being the victim of collateral suspicion as a prime example of life’s inherent unfairness. After all, why should one’s sex or skin color illicit fear or mistrust from a perfect stranger? Everyone should be presumed innocent, right?

Wrong. If we lived in a world where larceny, avarice, and cruelty were exceedingly rare, I could understand getting upset over collateral suspicion. But we don’t live in such a world. Sadly, larceny, avarice, and cruelty are far from rare.

Collateral suspicion is very fair. Moreover, it’s not going away. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary biology can’t be undone by laws and propaganda. And if you want to competently navigate a world governed by collateral suspicion, you have to embrace the following attitudes and beliefs.

• Proving yourself never completely ends. You will always be interacting with people who don’t know you well or don’t know you at all.
• People aren’t X-Men and X-Women. They can’t look at you and know exactly what’s in your heart, especially if you’re a stranger.
• Because people aren’t X-Men and X-Women, you can’t get upset if anyone considers you a threat. You need to put yourself in that person’s shoes. If he or she makes a wrong call, he or she could end up swindled, cheated, or abused. And if he or she makes a really wrong call, he or she could end up dead.
• Your reputation is partially determined by other members of your tribe. If enough members of your tribe are assholes, you will have a bad reputation—you will be suspect by default. After all…
  • There’s a reason why elderly people are considered bad drivers.
  • There’s a reason why frat boys are considered drunken louts.
  • There’s a reason why politicians are considered inveterate liars.
  • There’s a reason why Wall Street brokerage firms are considered the enemy of the retail investor.
  • And there’s a reason why fast-food joints in Detroit have bullet-proof glass and fast-food joints in Boise don’t.
• If you’re angered by collateral suspicion, be honorable and direct your anger appropriately. Don’t get angry with the person who’s suspicious of you, get angry at the assholes in your tribe who gave that person a good reason to be suspicious of you.

Is There a Personal Finance Angle to Collateral Suspicion?

When I first starting writing this post, I thought there was a clear connection between personal finance and collateral suspicion. But the examples I was going to use from my life to bolster my case turned out to be examples of direct suspicion instead. In other words, the people in these examples found me suspect, not because others in my tribe were assholes, but because I was an asshole.

I do think there’s a connection between personal finance and collateral suspicion. For example, I think the college you choose to attend and the major you choose to study will garner collateral suspicion from potential employers if you choose either of those things poorly. If I were in a position to hire newly minted college graduates, for instance, I would be very suspicious of someone who went to Evergreen College or received a degree in gender studies. But that’s just me. I have no empirical evidence showing that a substantial number of employers share my dim view Evergreen College and the gender studies degree.

Okay, just because I can’t make a clear connection between personal finance and collateral suspicion doesn’t mean this post is a total waste. There are at least two life lessons to be mined from this post. Here they are.

First, to appreciate human frailty and recognize that it’s sometimes prudent for people with incomplete knowledge to be suspicious of you is the mark of wisdom and decency. So don’t get bent out of shape if someone is wary of you—especially if he or she is a stranger. Your tribe is far from perfect and that person who’s suspicious of you has no way of knowing that you’re a good egg.

Second, it’s fun to pleasantly surprise people. Case in point. Marge was two years younger than me and went to the same high school. After she graduated high school, she too went to Buffalo University, and I would occasionally run into her at a bar or a party. Anyway, on one of these occasions, we got into a heavy conversation about life and politics. No rancor. Just two people sharing their thoughts and trying to defend their positions. Two weeks then went by and one of my housemates informed me that he saw Marge earlier that day and she had had an epiphany regarding me. In fact, her exact words regarding this epiphany were as follows: “I had no idea he had a brain in his head. I thought he was just a dumb f%cking jock.”

I just smiled. Marge wasn’t wrong to be suspicious of my mental acumen. I did hang out with a bunch of seemingly dumb jocks in high school, and I got a kick out of knowing that on at least one occasion I greatly exceeded her expectations.

Final Thoughts

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Is collateral suspicion an inescapable fact of life that should be appreciated and managed rather than scorned? Or is collateral suspicion a vile quirk of man that can and should be weeded out with extreme prejudice? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.