Racism is Often the Lowest Common Denominator

Sometimes when you eliminate everything else, it's the only thing left.

Photo by Yasin Yusuf on Unsplash

If any good has come out of the Trump era, it is that racism Black people have always known existed is out in the open for all to see.

When I write about the subtleties of anti-Black racism in everyday life, more than one of my former readers describes it as “selling race,” as though profit is my only motivation. Ironically, my white naysayers will probably be surprised to learn that, for me, writing about how this phenomenon touches me is a whole lot cheaper than therapy. 

Most white people don’t understand the hoops we Black folks jump through to navigate a world where whiteness is the default. Most will never grasp the number of mental tricks we use in everyday life, things non-Black people would never suspect. Most will never know the feeling of being the only person who looks like them in a room or the lift that comes with something as simple as seeing an emoji of the same color as you.

I’ve written about how my parents tried to protect my brothers and me from racism when I was a kid. They also equipped us with the tools to deal with the micro-aggressions they knew we’d deal with in adulthood. 

Since our family is biracial, my wife and I spend a good deal of time discussing these issues with our kids. Aside from having “the talk” regarding police, we also talk about recognizing when a negative experience is not because of racism. We subscribe to a system of racism detection we’ve used for years to accomplish this. We refer to the practice as “the lowest common denominator.”

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In mathematics, the lowest common denominator is the lowest common multiple of the denominators of a set of fractions. It’s a way to simplify adding and subtracting fractions. For us, the term has a different meaning.

When we have an experience we suspect is racism in action, we consider all the possibilities, reducing the event to the most logical explanation, that is to say, the lowest common denominator. 

For example, when I started a business in the nineties, I wanted an office in what was then called the TCBY Tower, the tallest building in Arkansas. Suspecting my Blackness could impede my leasing the space, I asked a white real estate agent I knew to approach the building management on my behalf. When I told a white friend about my strategy, he laughed at me, as he put it, “for being so paranoid.” 

Soon, my real estate friend came back to me with good news. She said Ernst & Young, the Big Four accounting firm, had just moved out of the TCBY building, and their old spot would be perfect for my startup. So we started the approval process. 

I submitted everything but the kitchen sink, financial documents, and revenue projections — but the building’s management never actually saw me in person.

After a few weeks of negotiations, I signed a lease that consisted of one-half of the thirty-fifth floor. The space came with a conference room, four offices, including a corner office with ceiling-to-floor windows, and a view of Pinnacle Mountain  twenty miles away. 

When my move-in day rolled around, I scheduled a time to meet the building manager to receive keys to the space, etc. Soon, a woman I recognized from advertising as the building’s manager arrived. Rather than welcoming me as a tenant, she immediately became apprehensive.

I’d seen the look before: she didn’t expect her new tenant to be Black.

Funeral Homes and Swimming Pools: How My Parents Gamified Racism

Instead of opening the office’s double doors, the manager found her keys to the office suddenly did not work. Frazzled, she said she would need to go back downstairs to “sort this out.” She returned a few minutes later with a look of concern, saying there must be a mistake.

The building manager informed me that the new tenant for this space “was a former employee of an investment firm”. This person, of course, was me! The building manager’s information was correct, but she could not grasp that her new tenant, the one who just quit an investment firm, could be Black. 

The building manager’s bias — her racism — was the lowest common denominator. My real estate agent was appalled and threatened legal action should I not receive keys by the close of business that day, which I did. That was how I spent my first day as an entrepreneur. 

A few days later, my brother and I went shopping for office furniture. To our surprise, the store had everything we needed. A few hours later, we had the perfect chairs for my conference room, desks for offices, lamps, and so on, totaling about $3,500.

I don’t recall precisely why, but I decided to pay in cash that day. But when I handed the cashier my money, he balked, saying he needed to consult the owner. 

After examining my U.S. dollars, the owner told me he’d need a cashier’s check for “this kind of purchase.” Of course, this made no sense, but I had an office to furnish. I acquiesced, going to my bank and purchasing a cashier’s check. But as my brother and I loaded my new furniture, we noticed a police car easing up beside us. 

After taking my money, the store owner called the police, saying that something about my cashier’s check looked “suspicious.” So for the next hour, my brother and I stood in front of the store while the police contacted my bank to confirm my cashier’s check was legit. 

Now I’d like my non-black reader to play along with me: Have you ever tried to purchase an expensive item with cash and been refused? If so, maybe the establishment didn’t carry the necessary funds on hand. I doubt, however, their response was to require a cashier’s check to complete your purchase. And I’d be willing to bet no one called the police. 

Using the system of the lowest common denominator, we asked ourselves, “Since when does a store refuse cash?” Why would a store owner call law enforcement on a customer who just bought $3,500 worth of furniture? The only logical answer is that this never happened  — unless two Black men were the customers. In other words, racism was the lowest common denominator.

For the invariable “that was a long time ago” crowd (it happened in the 1990s), here’s a final, more recent example. A few years ago, when we decided to move to the island where we now live, we searched for a place to rent there weren’t many options. Finally, we settled on a small condo. Not our first choice but it would do for a few months. Everything went well at first, and we were ready to sign a lease. 

After we submitted the customary items to the real estate agent, who represented the condominium owner, came back with a request: we needed to send copies of our driver’s licenses. Although this request was a first, we sent a few screenshots to the agent. 

After twenty-four hours and no word from the agent, we emailed asking if we got the place. A few hours later, the agent responded that the owner “decided to go in a different direction.” That was the last time we heard from the agent.

Was it because the owner saw the Black face on my driver’s license and decided not to rent to us? I’ll never know for sure, but sometimes, racism is the only explanation.