By Yolanda Stevens
My husband and I recently decided that now is a good time to refinance our home and get a lower interest rate. As part of that process our home needed to be appraised. In anticipation of this appointment, I shared with my husband, Rick, my concern that our home could be appraised for a lower value based on my ethnicity. In order to protect against that I felt that we needed to remove all black art and books from visible areas in our home. Initially, Rick disagreed with me. I appreciate that he wasn’t immediately okay with a plan that erased my ethnicity and needed to be convinced of its validity. After further discussion he suggested that I do what I felt was necessary.
I received an email from the appraiser on Saturday morning setting an appraisal appointment for Monday morning at 10 am. After confirming the appointment time, I immediately went into a panic because my email has my picture on it. I raced to change my gmail image to one of our dog Archer. I had a moment of panic trying to get that changed quickly. My heart was racing, and I was sweating. I didn’t want to be defeated before I started. I did manage to change the image and I believe that was the image he received in the response. I forwarded it to our daughter and rechecked it to see that the dogs image accompanied my email.
My first steps to preparing required that I make note of all of the things that would need to be removed. I started in our bathroom, I removed all of my hair and cultural bath products. I searched the floors and corners for traces of my natural hair and removed each black curl or strand I noticed. After this, I went into our daughter Endera’s bathroom (she’s out of town) and did the same things. I then went into her lounge/office and removed her art depicting black women, the pillow that was decorated with her image on her couch, the ethnic figurines and the books on cultural spirituality that she had been reading. I removed a beautiful picture from the wall of her hallway that she had lovingly painted out by our pool of a proud black girl’s silhouette. I went into her bedroom and removed the journals that featured black imagery on the covers and tucked them away in her drawers. My next steps took me to a bookcase in our main room that has several African studies titles that I appreciate, and I blocked them with a box. Together my husband and I removed a beautiful painting of a nude black woman done by Donald Boudreaux. It’s my husbands favorite painting in our home and we had to take it down. We replaced it with a smaller image of a tree scape near an Australian beach in New Castle. It was out of place and a disappointment in comparison to the beauty of what belonged there. I put the painting in my closet behind the door facing the wall. I moved a stool next to the door and piled a stack of folded clothes on top of the stool so that the back of the frame would not be visible at a casual glance. The next thing to do was to examine my closet to see if there were any overtly cultural clothing items that would be easily noticed – there weren’t but I had to check. I examined the books on the bookcase in our bedroom to see if there were any culturally significant titles that needed to be adjusted. I turned those around so that the pages were facing forward instead of the bookends.
As you can imagine I was experiencing a lot of anxiety around this whole thing. In my journal I wrote about the stress I was feeling. No one should ever have to feel like this. I had to remind myself that I had no reason to feel ashamed and that I was perfect as I am. These were difficult moments for me. I was going through my own home and removing cultural traces of my and my daughter’s identity. It was necessary to remove part of our essence and that did not feel right, comfortable or just. I reminded myself that I was doing all of this to protect our investment and that had to be enough for me. All that had been removed was going to be returned.
The morning of the appraisal, I called the security gate at 9:20 and asked the attendant to please call me when the appraiser arrived. I put my purse in the car and opened the garage. When I came back in, I put the leashes on our dogs and got a bag of treats and a ball. My plan was to drive them to the park to play while the appraisal was being conducted. Rick went out the garage to take out the trash. He returned and said the appraiser was out front. 15 minutes after my call and no call from the gate. Panic. I went out the pool door with both dogs.
I never walk out back. Our house is backed up to the golf course. My heart was racing a mile a minute, the dogs were excited because we were doing something new by going out the back, we were literally walking through water, the bottom of my jeans got wet, the leashes were tangled, and I couldn’t stop. I kept going, I walked towards the sidewalk praying no golf carts came – I was in the wrong place the wrong way. Golfers take everything to do with the sport seriously and walking on their track with the dogs would not have gone over well. My neighbor saw me and wanted to chat; I couldn’t talk I had to keep moving. One of the dogs decided to poop before we got to the sidewalk adjacent to the track. I picked it up, straightened the leashes and walked to the sidewalk. We walked down towards the residents’ entry/exit gate and stopped near one of the ponds.
I took my shoes off and stood on the grass hoping to ground myself. My mind was racing, my heart was beating, and I was upset. I didn’t have the words to really pray, I was feeling too high strung. I put smooth jazz on my phone put it in my ears and focused on my breathing. Once I mentally slowed down, I sat on the grass with the dogs (it was dry here). After 30 minutes, Rick called. He said he was glad I had left; the appraiser was from South Africa and had been telling Rick about all the places to avoid in Africa and where he thought he should consider visiting if he traveled there. It left Rick feeling like my not being present was the best thing to do. He told me he’d call me after the man had finished outside. He called me back around 15 minutes later to say I could come home. I stayed where I was on the ground. I was waiting to see the appraiser’s car come by. The appraiser had asked where I was when he arrived, and Rick told him I had gone to walk the dogs. I saw him slow down when he saw me sitting with the dogs. I did not turn around to look at him. I didn’t get up until I saw his car go through the gate and turn onto the street. Then I got up and walked home.
The first thing I did was put my daughter’s things back in their proper places. I removed the box blocking the books in the main room. I then went and got the painting that belonged on the wall and Rick and I hung it together.
I had planned to have myself an “Artist date” on the same day. Rick suggested I go do that. I didn’t go. I was so upset I just needed to sit with my feelings. When you experience the need to be hypervigilant about your color it’s such a weighty emotional roller coaster that you feel physically drained. The whole experience was demeaning in its necessity. There was never any indication that the appraiser would undervalue our home because I was black, but I have an understanding of how racism can play out and I wanted to protect us from the potential of that. I have no proof that he had anything against people of color, but I would not be willing to test that theory out when it comes to our investments.
Truthfully, I didn’t feel free to exist in those moments. Looking back on it I had moments of being ashamed of myself for not taking a stand, I had moments where I felt like it’s not fair that I feel this way. My neighbor asked me what I would have done if we were both black? I told her I was so happy that I was a part of the Unitarian community because I trust them enough to have asked someone else to be present for the appraisal. This is the reality of protective defensive steps that people of color make as naturally as we breathe. We are diminished in the process. This experience has taken a significant emotional toll on me. I haven’t said much about my personal feelings to anyone, but I am hurting, and I am breathing through the pain trying to return to my naturally optimistic state. Not every tear is meant to be shed but these are.
If you are working to alleviate racial injustice, then this story is for you. We need you, your commitment, your ideas, your voice, your presence and your dollars. There are lives and hearts that can be healed and changed for the better because you see us and hear us when we speak because you will advocate for justice in ways we cannot.
