Yard Signs, Yardwork, Smiles & Heart Work

I live in a quiet neighborhood in an affluent Chicago suburb. There is but one road into the neighborhood of 73 houses, leading to a figure eight of homes originally built in the mid twentieth century and lined with magnificent 70-foot trees. We moved into the neighborhood four years ago during a similarly resplendent autumn, in the middle of the presidential election. There were nearly 20 Trump campaign signs decorating the front yards in various sizes; there were also Clinton signs in slightly fewer yards. In the four years we have lived here, we have been the only Black family living alongside two White/Asian American interracial families. We wave and smile to each neighbor we see. They smile and wave back.

Late this spring, America began to experience a racial awakening of sorts. News traveled all the way to the Australian leadership team I support at work and meet with weekly — “Reggie, why are there so many protests? We’ve never seen anything quite so significant!” One by one, “Black Lives Matter” signs began popping up in our neighborhood. Well, we planted the first one. That first sign led to a conversation with two neighbors we’ve never said much more to than “Beautiful weather!” and “How are you?” These new discussions led to: “How can I get one of those signs?” and “Thank you so much for your boldness; I remember that letter from the Birmingham Jail!” Today there are 13 Black Lives Matters signs spread throughout the neighborhood that have stood, staked in the manicured lawns and were present prior to the arrival of the election season. The signs have since been joined by political campaign signs for 2020’s election.

Unlike four years ago, today we see only two Trump signs. Our local congressional race is between Democrat incumbent Sean Casten and Republican challenger and Trump-ally Jeanne Ives. There are many Casten and Ives signs. The exit data will show whether the Ives signs are merely stand-ins for Trump signs. For what it’s worth, we have yet to see an Ives sign and a Black Lives Matter sign share the same yard. From the 2016 polls, election results and exit surveys, we’ve learned that for a variety of reasons, there are many silent Trump supporters. Regardless of the results, nothing can replace the feeling of bending around the curves of our block and seeing the Black Lives Matter signs. I will never forget conversations my nine-year-old and seven-year-old initiated over these tiny cardboard statements while our four-year-old remarked “turn left to go home, Dad.”

I grew up in a very similar Chicago suburb. We too, were one of only a few minority families in our neighborhood (there was another black family and a few families of Asian descent.) Thankfully, during my youth, my run-ins with local law enforcement never escalated, but I did face harassment from local police, including being pulled over (lights flashing and all) in my own driveway before turning the vehicle on and being asked for my “license and registration.” I can vividly remember one of the most psychologically damaging interactions I had with police. I was 18 years old and waiting in the parking lot of a movie theater to pick up my younger brother and sister from an afternoon showing. Again, I was not actually operating the vehicle. A police officer approached and asked if everything was ok; he asked if the car was broken down, or if I was fine. I was touched by the kind gesture and even smiled and told the officer, happily, that I was waiting for my brother and sister to get out of a movie with their church youth group. The officer then flipped to the increasingly familiar — “license and registration” and said that he wanted to make sure that I was “supposed to be in the car.” What hurt the most is that for a brief moment I thought that he genuinely cared about me and was there to protect and serve me, rather than protecting the community from me. The Black Baptist church I grew up in was one of the safe spaces and sources of belonging and family for me, growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood. Our common hopes and struggles and in some respects the opportunity to escape the ills of White Supremacy were healing balms to our American experience.

The harassment has decreased as I have aged, but I still do get pulled over often enough to remind me of my not belonging. One evening while in my mid-thirties, I was pulled over at 11:30pm following my indoor soccer game and was asked “Where are you going?” Having obtained two law degrees, I found myself wanting to tell the similarly-aged officer that the Fugitive Slave Act, a law requiring Black slaves to show papers proving that they were free, ended in the early portion of the US Civil War, but after quickly weighing the cost benefit of delivering my quip with becoming a hashtag and not seeing my children grow up, I instead told the officer where I was coming from and where I was going, and of course…handed over my license and registration. The irony of the slowing of the harassment coinciding with the rapid progression of my son’s growth towards these same evils is painful to consider. He is but seven, yet that makes him only five years younger than Tamir Rice — the boy shot by police in less than three seconds in response to a 911 call regarding a boy playing with “probably a toy gun” in a park.

At the time of the Ahmaud Arbery’s shooting, we already had a sign in our yard. It was a sign advertising a local lawn care company who had recently taken over our landscaping. This sign was likely a source of hope for others in the neighborhood. Four years ago, we bought our fixer upper. The inside needed much more than a face lift. We referred to each of the bathrooms by their distinctive and hideous mid-century colors: the “all pink bathroom”; the “baby blue bathroom”; the “yucky brown bathroom”; and the “pastel purple bathroom.” We spent so much time (and by we, I mean my remarkably handy wife) attending to the interior renovations — tearing down five walls, three of which were load bearing, building a 60 square foot kitchen island, and laying new wood flooring…that our yard had fallen below the standard of our beautifully manicured neighbors. With three kids under six, two dogs and 1,000 interior house projects, yardwork seemed a luxurious notion.

The now deceased elderly mother of our next-door neighbor was once found weeding our yard, as the weeds had spread across our property line and moved aggressively into our neighbor’s yard in a General George S. Patton-like maneuver. That is when we knew we needed to hire a lawn service. While the neighbors on both sides might have been excited to see the small lawn service advertisement sign, what concerned them the most was not the sign — instead, it is was the yardwork. That’s right, the follow through; not the acknowledgment of the need.

Are these social justice declarations just yard signs? Are these marking the houses of new allies? Are there really 13 safe houses for when my 16-year-old Black son inevitably gets pulled over in his own neighborhood? Have these families transitioned from showing that they’ve acknowledged the need with their signs to working to use their personal, social, financial and political resources to help make change for those who are oppressed? Allies have played pivotal roles in the black equality and freedom struggle. While historians and educators disagree regarding whether quilts played a role as signposts in the Underground Railroad, it is well accepted that resources like The Negro Motorist Green-Book helped thousands of Black Americans navigate the dangers of traveling under the violent threat of White Supremacy. We have had more conversations with neighbors, believers and nonbelievers, on the events of this summer. But amidst all the excellent conversations, book recommendations and heartwarming signs, the underlying inequalities have continued. The murders have also continued — although the Molotov cocktail of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd ignited this significant movement, 20% of the people killed by police from May 26, 2020 to August 31, 2020 were also Black (which is disproportionate to the 13% of the United States population that is Black).

Neither my current nor my childhood neighborhoods are divinely called to love and treat my family well. Our local church, regardless of its racial make-up, should be a place for my Black family to thrive, yet it is often another place in this nation that racist logics and treatment healthily remain. A vast number of both Christian and secular news sources have noted the exodus of Black congregants from White Evangelical spaces. My family has also struggled to persist in the sea of white faces in our local congregation. While we have made dear friends and significant inroads in awakening congregants and leaders alike to some of the problems facing Black brothers and sisters in America, we have also been met with great resistance and apathy. We feel nearly a constant tug-of-war between our calling to this faith community and the anger and reluctance of Jonah to minister to Nineveh. The Church is where I expect to see the oft-quoted commandment to “Love Your Neighbor” translate into personal, political and systemic work. Seeing so little action from white brothers and sisters of faith would assuredly lead me to exclude our church from a modern-day Green book.

My neighbors were probably happy to see our yardwork advertisement sign, but undoubtedly much happier to see the yardwork. Our fertilizer and weeding, and by “our” I mean the arduous work of the landscaping company that we’ve hired, makes their yards and property more valuable and enjoyable. I suppose the question my family has is this — will we see a transition from Yard Signs and kind Smiles to evidence of Heart Work? It is no longer trending on your timelines, and the Yard Signs have been battered by two seasons of sun, a sprinkling of premature snow and some rain, but Black Lives still Matter. What will you do to make it so?