The Apple

  I don’t just run my mouth in a blog, I’ve been doing this for a while.  I was giving the guys at work some grief one day when one of them said, “You’re always shooting your mouth off about minorities, why don’t you become an EEO officer?”  I work for the federal government as a uniformed officer and each office has people designated as Special Emphasis Program Managers.  That’s governmentese for an EEO representative.  SEPM’s are then chosen to represent Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and women.  About two weeks after this conversation, I was sent to a weeklong training to become the Native American SEPM for my office.

  Essential duties of the SEPM include recruiting and a limited amount of counseling for my co-workers who may have EEO issues.  As luck would have it, no one had really tried recruiting the Indians to work for the government before so my EEO goals were relatively easy to accomplish.

  At the time that I had gotten involved in the EEO program, I was actively involved in a variety of Native issues and already knew a lot of people in the surrounding community and across the state.  Since no one had reached out to the Natives before, reaching quotas for obtaining contacts and soliciting of applications was too easy.  Our people were hungry for work, just like everyone else.

  But this story’s about the apple, not the government’s efforts to hire Native Americans.  (Thank goodness, there isn’t a lot of that.)

  So I go to Syracuse University for a big job fair one year.  I’m working the room, grabbing people by the arm to get them to talk to me, and at the end of most job fairs, my voice is hoarse and my throat is sore from all the fast-talking I have to do.  Really, these kids are walking by the table and you have like 10 seconds to get them to come over to see what you have on your table to give away.  You need to talk fast.

  A few college kids are standing in front of me and there’s this one young black man standing behind them, intently listening to what I have to say about working for my agency and obtaining a federal job in general.  His friends picked up some of the literature I had on the table and were about to leave when he finally says something to me.

  In his thick Jamaican accent, the young man said, “You’re nothing but an apple working against your own people. You’re a buffalo soldier.”  He had heard me talking about hiring minorities and that I was Native and it was obvious from his impression of me that I had been turned against my own. 

  This kid knew some history.  If you’re not familiar with the term “buffalo soldier,” this name was given to the black units of the cavalry that fought against the Indians in the settling of the west.  The nickname stuck and eventually, Buffalo Soldiers were the Army’s designation for the all-black units.

  It was the “Apple” thing though.  That one hurt.  Calling an Indian an apple is calling him red on the outside and white on the inside.  This is one of those rare instances where I was at a loss for a response.  Some other kids came up to the table and the Jamaican kid walked off, talking to his friends about me.  I could only imagine what he told them about buffalo soldiers and apples.

  This bothered me all day.  Ever have some little comment you just happened to overhear or said directly to you that just sticks in your craw?  I had a couple of hours to think about this one and then it was time to tear down my displays, pack the goodies I brought with me and head for the long drive home.  I have to walk through the cafeteria to get out of the building and I’m lugging two big boxes when I spot my Jamaican buddy sitting at a table all by himself.  He was reading and didn’t spot me coming.

  “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Sure,” he says.

  “It’s one thing to demonstrate in front of the police station and wave signs and complain how your people are treated when they’re stopped driving while black or arrested or shot during an arrest.  If you think that’s how you can best effect change and do right by your people, you keep waving your sign.”

  I didn’t stop.  I had all afternoon to think about what I wanted to say to this kid.

  “Who do you think is in a better position to bring about change, you standing on the outside on some street corner or me on the inside?  I get to sit in the patrol car next to my partner and explain to him what our culture is like and how they might respond or feel about what we do on the job.  And it’s not just my partner, my whole department learns what Indians are like because they work with me.  Hopefully, I can get to get my co-workers to respect Indians because of the example I lead so that the next time one of us is encountered, there might be some hesitation to taking some kind of strong-arm tactic and finding another solution.  I think being on the inside is a better deterrent to getting my people beaten or shot than just shouting and waving some sign.  People do what they can to bring about change.  I am.”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  From the look on his face, I think I may have won back some respect from him.  I told him I had to go and we shook hands.  The long drive home was easier than I thought it would be.