When I’m playing with my radio in a public park, I try to make sure that I am physically safe by being aware of my surroundings while my headphones are on, and that I’m always presenting the right image that I’m just a guy doing a thing that’s totally natural and nonthreatening. It usually gets me by. But sometimes people walk past and bear inquisitive frowns as they’re trying to figure out just what I’m doing with all that gear. They usually lighten up when I explain that it’s amateur radio, and no it’s not spy gear, no it’s not a police scanner, no it’s not like on CB, and so on.
But a few weeks ago I had an occasion that made me stop what I was doing and examine my appearance a little more closely in an unexplored dimension. A family was walking past me on their way back to their car from spending time in the park. This little girl about 9 or 10 asked her parents what I was doing; they didn’t know and couldn’t answer. I was in the process of throwing a lead weight into a tree and pulling down the rope to work on raising my dipole antenna. As I’m tugging on the loose end under the tree, she walked up to me and, half curious, half apprehensive, she wanted to know what I was doing.
I turned to look at her, and i could see her family behind her already at their car; they were all apprehensively looking too. As I was mid-sentence explaining that I was raising an antenna for my radio, it occurred to me exactly what it looked like; here’s this white guy in a public park stringing a rope in a tree, and there’s this black child and her family wanting to know just what I was doing. I pushed out the rest of the explanation and smiled as warmly as I could until she and her family were satisfied that I was not a threat.
Never in my life would I ever have thought that there could be a racial component in amateur radio. I never would have thought that, if overlooked, it could ever be misconstrued as blatant racism. Never. I go out in order to pursue the hobby and hope to pique the interest of passers-by so they’ll want to know more, but, as in anything else in the public sphere, there are images and interpretations that must be considered so nothing ever escalates to a bad place, especially in these heated times.
Be careful out there, friends. Consider your actions and your appearances; like radio waves, they can transmit farther than you intend. Above all, be sure to mind your manners in public and be friendly — and look friendly — to everyone you can. We are all humans.