Parker Gillian laughed the first time a white co-worker sent her money unprompted. It was all she could do.
Since protests erupted last week over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis, Gillian had been hearing from white acquaintances who wanted to check in on her well-being. There was a straightforward logic to it: She is a young black woman in Chicago, and there is a civil rights movement playing out nationwide, on streets and on screens, with black people at its center.
But some of the people who reached out were not especially close to her. And even those who were actually friends seemed to subtly ask for her guidance about how they, Good White Allies, should handle the moment. The wave of good intentions started to feel like a riptide.
Then on Monday night the direct message popped up on her Instagram account.
“What’s your Cash App?” wrote a co-worker, referring to the mobile payment application.
Gillian, 24, sent over her username, confused. “U my sugar daddy?” she wrote back as a joke.
Soon, $20 landed in her account.
With it came pangs of humiliation.
“I felt like a charity case,” said Gillian, a recent college graduate working in marketing, who said she had never expressed any financial need. “I know that she didn’t mean it in the way I took it. But I couldn’t help but take it that way. I think she was just trying to do something that made her feel good. I don’t think it had anything to do with me.”