Humans always have differences. Our spiritual beliefs, scientific logic, philosophical mindsets, political inclinations, and many other characteristics, in various combinations, fractionalize us through conflicts. What divides us can be benevolent but often seeps into hatred. We are suspicious of anything or anyone we do not understand, and for some, that includes those that we cannot control. Furthermore, racial disparity fuels our fears, usually resulting in violent bickering, astonishing disharmony, and from these come wars, small and great. Well, not just those waged on a battlefield, but also those within our subconscious. This is a short story about the day that I discovered that I was free from racism.
During an Indian summer, when I turned twenty-three, I learned I'd been accepted to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York. I worked for six years in men's formalwear sales but quit the management post when I learned of my acceptance to the Fashion Design program. Although I only had a few hundred dollars in an old wallet, I was still determined to leave Chicago for a better life. I had tried to go to college before, but the economics of the Reagan Era left me with debt when that president cut student loans in the middle of a semester, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago sued me for the balance of the tuition I owed. It is all blurred now, but somehow in August of 1987, I stood in the middle of the terminal at Chicago's O'Hare airport and reasoned about the decision to move away from my family and friends. As I strolled through the long hall, deeper evaluations surfaced about racism, forming bewilderment and an internal quandary. Racism was a word that had been on my mind for years, and the meaning shaped how I interacted with the world. Racism was the great American divide that drove me to strive to be the best. I was not racist, but I always felt that because it existed, I was not good enough. I sought to be ten times better than anyone else when I applied to college, and to me, it had paid off. There I was after receiving the acceptance letter, ready to leave town. In the inner recesses of my mind, I asked myself why, but I already knew the answer. Why did I feel such a need to be better? Indeed, the struggle was perceptual, yet my actions revealed my unspoken meditations and exposed a latent inferiority complex.
Thoughts about racism had, until this hot day in August, been mere cerebral analogies of personal experiences. However, avoiding the pitfalls society plotted was a reality I faced repeatedly as a person of color. Up to that time, nearly all the authority figures who had the opportunity to evaluate me were of other races, but most were white. These people would consider me with their eyes, generate records about me, examine my teeth and body at check-ups, make nasty comments as they passed, or even do things to set me back so I could not succeed. Consequently, being the best at anything I presented publicly had become the goal. I stopped in the terminal and stood still, thinking about why I should move away. Was I making a mistake? Sadly, it was the tiny whisper of racism and its resonance that made up my mind.
The rest of this story — and what happened when I arrived in New York — is told in full in Atelier Quarterly Vol. II: Couture Reformation.
Vol. I — La Belle Époque Redux is available now: Get Vol. I — $35 →
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Atelier Quarterly is a menswear couture magazine written and designed by Stacy Stewart Smith. Published from New York.
Stacy Stewart Smith (he, him)
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