PREFACE
Below is the long long awaited WATERMELON blog. Exactly one year ago today, an awe-inspiring and life-altering incident took place. For many reasons, this piece remained unpublished. I had an opportunity to release it, but I was never fully satisfied with what I had written. It felt too important a moment to be conveyed poorly or half-heartedly.
My struggle was never with the facts. The dilemma lay in the delivery. Should I write it as an editorial, infused with my point of view as a biased witness, aiming to shape the conversation and push public opinion? Or should I approach it like a journalist, laying out the facts as objectively as possible and allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions? With no clear resolution, I shelved the story.
YES! YES! YES! I already know what you’re thinking. “Doing nothing about a problem means you’re just as responsible for it.” And you’re right. I believe my actions in my community prove that I am not someone who stands still in the face of injustice. But in this one case, I chose silence over imperfection.
Still, the story refused to die. My close friends heard it. They told their friends, who told their friends, and so on and so on until it took on the weight and shape of urban folklore. The incident lived on through whispers and re-tellings, twisted and re-imagined like a modern-day myth.
Even as recently as last Sunday, someone I had never met walked up to me at my usual spot and asked, “Aren’t you the guy who wrote the watermelon blog?” I was floored. That question has been asked so many times now that it has become a running joke among my friends. They’ve dubbed it “The Greatest Blog Never Written.”
I would never call it that. But I do know it is a story that deserves to be seen and discussed. And that is where you come in.
A year to the day, I am offering you the truth. Uncut. Raw. This is the product. Take it. Use it. Share it.
CHAPTER ONE OF ONE
It took several days for me to wrap my mind around the staggering event I witnessed on the evening of Wednesday July 5th, 2006, just a few blocks from my apartment in Brooklyn. A friend and I were walking up Flatbush Avenue toward Church Avenue, one of the busiest and most densely Black-populated areas in New York City. As we made our way up the avenue, I caught sight of what I initially believed to be a hallucination. I tilted my head, stretched my neck, blinked several times for clarity.
Before us stood a group of fifteen to twenty blond-haired, blue-eyed white missionaries. They wore red stenciled t-shirts, denim shorts, and flip-flops. They strummed acoustic guitars and sang “Negro Spirituals,” attempting with impressive fervor to convert the perceived heathens of East Flatbush.
It felt like one of the final signs of some apocalyptic prophecy. The gentrification of East Flatbush was complete. The first sign had been that I could now get sushi delivered to my apartment.
And yet, that surreal tableau was not what fully took my breath away.
What truly made me pause, slack-jawed and stunned, was the sight of a petite five foot one white woman. Her dainty pink and porcelain hands gripped a colossal tray filled to the brim. Not a single inch of space remained. And what did this tray carry?
WATERMELON.
Yes. Watermelon.
This white missionary was handing out heaping slices of watermelon to a large crowd of Black men, women, and children on the corner of Church and Flatbush Avenues, right in front of the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church.
I covered my mouth with my hand, instinctively, to prevent the rush of thoughts from pouring out unchecked.
Black folks surrounded her, pressing forward like hungry beggars in a crisis zone, pushing and shoving to get a slice of fruit. Two whole watermelons sat behind her, waiting to be cut and served.
After my heart settled, I declined the offer as politely and professionally as I could muster in such a surreal moment. Then I asked if I could take a picture.
“Sure,” she said with an eager smile. “If you try my watermelon.”
“That’s not happenin’,” I replied. “But I’d still like to take the picture.” She agreed.
YES THERE ARE PICTURES. BECAUSE WITHOUT THEM I WOULDN’T HAVE BELIEVED THIS STORY MYSELF. UNFORTUNATELY, THE BEST PIC OF HER LEANING THE TRAY FORWARD IN AN ATTEMPT TO ENTICE ME TO TRY THE WATERMELON, WITH THE BIGGEST SMILE LOOKING LIKE A BLEACHED SKINNED MAMMY PHOTO, WAS ACCIDENTALLY DELETED IN MY MOMENT OF PURE SHOCK AND BAFFLEMENT.
My friend grabbed my arm and pulled me away. I have been called hypersensitive before. Told I overreact. Accused of seeing offense where there is none. So I needed to confirm that this wasn’t one of those moments.
Across the street, I spotted a Black Caribbean man who managed a nearby store. I approached him and laid out what I had just witnessed. He looked me square in the eye, and with a playful smirk hiding serious disbelief, he said it.
“Liar.”
He practically spelled it out.
I anticipated his disbelief and showed him the pictures. His jaw dropped.
He called his coworkers to witness the evidence. And like a tragic comedy chorus, they all asked the same question that every Black person has asked when I retell this story:
“WHERE WAS THE FRIED CHICKEN?!?!?!”
The laughter, though absurd, validated me.
We returned to the church. By this time, a light-skinned girl with almost albino features and a kink of curl in her hair had been recruited to hand out the watermelon.
NOW I KNOW THIS SHIT IS REALLY FUCKED UP. BECAUSE YOU REALIZED FROM MY FIRST PASSING HOW CRAZY AN IMAGE IT WAS. SO THEY HAD THE GIRL WITH A DROPLET OF BLACK TAKE OVER AS IF THAT WOULD MAKE THINGS ANY BETTER.
I felt the rage climb inside me again.
But I stayed composed. I approached the original woman calmly, cautiously. I kept my body language neutral. I softened the rhythm of my breath.
“May I ask you a question?” I said.
“Sure,” she answered, still smiling like she was expecting me to return for that slice of fruit.
“Don’t you believe it’s culturally insensitive for a group of white missionaries, and yourself, also a white woman, to stand on the corner of Church and Flatbush, a Black neighborhood, and pass out watermelon?”
The gate to the church creaked open. The missionaries were summoned back inside like children called in from recess. The only Black organizer, a woman whose frown betrayed her anxiety, came toward us. She looked at me with disdain but said nothing. She tried to pull the woman back inside.
To her credit, the white woman stayed.
“Well… I saw Latinos passing too,” she offered.
“Oh my God. Please don’t do that.” I was pleading now.
“Did I offend you?”
“I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
“We didn’t mean to offend anyone. I don’t see what was wrong with us giving watermelon out.”
She was being honest. And honestly clueless.
“It’s a hot summer day. I like to eat watermelon on days like this. So why not share the watermelon with everyone?”
We stood on the steps of one of the oldest Dutch churches in America. A structure with its own twisted legacy.
People rushed by us, trying to get to the stores before they closed. Amid it all, two Caribbean men, probably in their forties, got up from the church steps. Each had a slice already, and each took another.
They devoured their pieces hungrily. One held his new slice in his left hand while slurping the remains of the old one in his right. Juice streamed down both sides of his mouth. Seeds flew to the sidewalk.
That was it.
I lost it. In the calmest way I could manage.
“STOP EATING THE WATERMELON! LOOK AT THE IMAGE YOU’RE CREATING!”
The man turned to me, chuckling.
“Mon, just eat deh whatahmelon. It’s gourd.”
The white woman looked up at me and smiled. Proud.
“You have to know this image holds terrible social and historical stereotypically negative connotation associated with us as a race. And you truly don’t see what’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“YOU HAVE TO KNOW THIS IMAGE HOLDS TERRIBLE SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL STEREOTYPICALLY NEGATIVE CONNOTATION ASSOCIATED WITH US AS A RACE. AND YOU TRULY DON’T SEE WHAT’S WRONG WITH IT?” I asked.
She didn’t. She really didn’t.
She stood there, blinking like I was the one who’d lost the thread. Like I had pulled the rug out from a simple act of kindness and turned it into a racial dissertation she never signed up for.
And that’s the fucked-up part. She thought she was being kind.
In her mind, she was just handing out fruit on a hot day. Giving people something sweet and cold. Feeding the hungry. Loving the neighbor. Saving the soul.
But she didn’t see the plantation ghost clapping in the shadows. She didn’t see the Minstrel shows echoing in the wind. She didn’t hear the snapping of Black backs or the wet thump of stolen fruit hitting the dirt beside a shanty shack.
She didn’t see us.
And that’s what hurt the most.
You come into my neighborhood with your choir and your flip-flops, and you decide we need saving. You stand on a street corner with your tray of watermelon—watermelon—and you don’t even pause to ask yourself, How might this look? How might this feel?
But maybe that’s the point. You didn’t need to ask. Because to you, the image doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a snack.
But to us? It’s a legacy. It’s a wound. It’s a fucking punchline.
And when I tell you it hurts, when I say it’s offensive, when I beg you to see what I see—you shrug.
You hand out another slice.
Later that night, I sat in my room and stared at the pictures. I zoomed in on her face. The tray. The children. The juice running down a man’s chin like he was living in a cartoon stereotype. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to write.
But instead, I sat in silence.
Because I didn’t want to be “the angry Black guy” again.
I didn’t want to be labeled militant or dramatic or “too sensitive.”
I didn’t want to explain—again—why this shit matters.
But it does. IT FUCKING MATTERS.
Because if you can’t see how a white woman standing on Flatbush Avenue handing watermelon to Black folks is a problem, then maybe you are part of the problem.
I didn’t need an apology. I needed awareness. I needed someone to say, “Damn. I didn’t realize. Thank you for telling me.”
But that moment never came.
Instead, I walked home with the sour taste of sugar in my mouth.
And that’s why I’m writing this now. One year later.
Not because I want to drag anybody. But because I want us to look.
To see what’s in our hands before we offer it to someone else.
To think before we serve something that’s laced with history and pain.
To listen when someone says, “That hurts me.”
Even if it’s just watermelon.
Because sometimes, the sweetest fruit leaves the bitterest aftertaste.
This isn’t about banning watermelon or policing kindness.
It’s about respect.
It’s about empathy.
It’s about seeing each other fully — our histories, our wounds, our stories.
Because true kindness asks more than just the act.
It asks the heart behind it.
So next time you want to offer something sweet, pause.
Ask yourself: Whose story am I stepping into?
And if the answer isn’t clear, maybe listen before you hand it out.
Because healing starts when we choose to understand, not just to give.
And that’s a truth sweeter than any slice of watermelon.
