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Of lice and men

Poet Robert Burns was sitting in church when he noticed a live louse crawling in a young woman’s bonnet. He stared, fascinated, pondering the contrast between its loathsome presence and the woman’s beauty and dress. It inspired his poem “To A Louse, On Seeing One in a Lady’s Bonnet in Church.” Burns wrote in Lowland Scots — difficult reading. But not the poem’s most famous lines: “Oh, wad some Power the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!/It wad frae mony a blunder free us/An’ foolish notion.” His point: If God gave us the ability to see ourselves as others do, we’d stop posing.

Recently, Atlantic magazine published “Now I Understand Why My Parents Were So Strict” by African-American writer Brianna Holt. Holt said she couldn’t understand, as a teen, why her parents imposed stricter standards than her white friends’ parents. They told her that if she and her friends ever got into trouble, she would likely be blamed. They were right. Holt described a teenage trip to a mall. Her white girlfriend had $150 but shoplifted cheap jewelry she could easily pay for. Holt was shocked. The girls then went to a kiosk, where the girlfriend stole three pairs of sunglasses. This time, a clerk spotted them, chased them and called security.

The clerk swore to seeing Holt stole the sunglasses. The guard searched Holt and threatened her with arrest if she didn’t turn them over. Holt’s girlfriend said nothing as Holt was accused. Then a bystander suggested the guard search the girlfriend. He did, and in her bag found the sunglasses and the jewelry. The clerk was speechless. All talk of arrest vanished. The girls were warned and ejected from the mall.

Holt admitted the clerk might have made an innocent mistake. But she believed she had been the victim of racial profiling. Writing now about her strict parents in light of the George Floyd case, she could understand why they had cautioned her, especially when she was hanging out with white friends.

I thought about Holt’s article and recalled something from many years ago. I was in law school in San Francisco, going home on a city bus. The bus was packed, all seats taken and aisle jammed. I was standing near the rear exit. Suddenly, a young white woman turned to a young African-American next to me and said “you stole my wallet.” He was 2 feet from me. I can still see the look of horror on his face — the blood drained from it — and he suddenly lunged for the back door. Several people, including me, grabbed him, but he wrenched free and fled the bus.

I was a prosecutor in Alaska for most of my legal career. I never considered myself bigoted. But while working as a prosecutor in Utqiagvik years ago, I realized I had racist attitudes that I was unaware of: Principally, I presumed to understand other cultures when I didn’t. I soon realized the simple truth that we all want dignity, safety, respect, a decent living and a better life for our children.

Back to Burns, Holt, and the man on the bus: Evidence law states that flight — trying to escape if accused, trying to conceal one’s crime — can be considered “evidence of consciousness of guilt.” A famous legal treatise quotes Proverbs: “The wicked flee though no man pursueth; the just shall stand as the lion.” If innocent, a person remains confident.

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I’ll never know if the man on the bus was a pickpocket. It was 40 years ago; he disappeared into the rush-hour crowd. But in light of Holt’s article, written as a result of what happened to George Floyd and too many other people of color, it dawned on me that he might have fled in terror — terror of a false accusation. If my race had a history of unfair treatment, I might run too.

Most of us deny we’re racist. But perhaps the worst racism is being so convinced of my own rectitude that I presume to understand and judge others’ experiences without actually listening. Maybe if I listen, “the giftie will gie me” the power to see the louse in my hair.

Mike McLaughlin is a semi-retired lawyer, born and raised in Anchorage, who was a state prosecutor for most of his legal career (1980-2015).

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