Archive for January 14th, 2007

The Cobbfather tagged me in on this, which is good, because I’ve been meaning to talk about something a little more significant than the Eagles.  Although I will get to them later.

It was spring of my senior year.  A gymnastics-built friend of mine and I were strolling down Cottman Avenue after school.  Well, after school for us.  Most students got out at 2:08.  Because we had lunch last period, we got out at about 1:15.  Anyway, it was early afternoon.  There I was with my exaggerated limp-legged lope, exacerbated by the fact that I was just getting back to walking after having torn my ACL in January.  A good writer might have said that we were a study in contrasts: my part-pimp, mostly gimp limp next to her short, double-time, toe dance steps; my saggy, off-the-rump sweat pants next to her painted-on acid wash jeans; my shaved head and her curls that flowed past her scalpulae.  We weren’t together-together, or even close to being that.  We were close friends, though.  Since I had lost a (to that point) undefeated senior season to an opponent whose butt I was thoroughly kicking, there were several times when self pity tried to take over.  My friend wouldn’t let it.  For the most part, it was about the little things she did, like making me walk when I wanted to stop or keeping her pace when I wanted to walk slowly and complain. She always seemed to know when I genuinely needed a break and when she needed to say, “Gimme a break.” 

So like I said, it’s spring.  We’re walkin’ down Cottman Avenue.  Just crossed over Castor avenue, walking by the Clover that was on the corner.  (Or was it a J.C. Penney back then?)  Talkin about whatever we talked about.  Possibly laughing at the fact that one of her boyfriend’s friends had actually asked her when they broke up and she and I started going together.  (I doubt that’s what we were actually talking about, but it makes for a much more interesting story.)  Whatever we were talking about, I didn’t notice the dude coming up.  I shouldn’t say I didn’t notice him, because I saw him walking in the direction opposite us, but I didn’t pay him any more attention than I would have paid anybody else under the circumstances.  He looked at the two of us and then snarled, “What a waste.” 

I looked at her and then turned around and said, “It ain’t goin’ to waste!”

No I didn’t.  In reality, I just looked at her, flagged him off, and kept pimp-gimp-limpin’ towards the mall. 

That’s it.  That’s my big racism story.  Not much, I know.  But then again, I think there’s a reason for that.  I mean, I have other stories, although mine aren’t nearly as bad as most of the brothers I know.  I’ve been pulled over a few times, but generally speaking, I get more hassle from Black police officers than white ones.  Yahmeen, I got the “are you lost?” pull-over one time, but you know what?  I really was lost. 

But see, as I think about it, I really don’t know if I can write about the most racist thing that’s ever happened to me, because I don’t know what that is.  In other words, on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst example of racism that I can think of, dude saying something to my friend and me may rate about a 1.5 or so, maybe a 3 if I was telling it to some of my Nationalist friends, but that’s about it.  It never stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do, and by virtue of the fact that I was never that much of a hothead, there wasn’t much some total stranger could say to me that would rattle my cage.  He said his piece, I looked at him like he was crazy, and that was that.  I mean, I’ve seen racist events, or more accurately the results of racist events, but they aren’t actually my stories.  I was just there when it happened to somebody else.  For me personally, assuming that I have been on the receiving end of racist actions, they had to have taken place when I couldn’t see them.

But see, that’s the difficulty with this whole question.  I don’t think there’s anybody who questions the existence of racism, but I do think there’s a lot of debate over the degree to which it has the power to shape our existence.  I have some friends who believe strongly that racism has a high stopping power in the Black community and is the reason we haven’t gotten it together yet.  I don’t see it that way.  But I think that’s partially because I don’t always look for racism.  For instance, with that record store in Arlington that I’ll never go to again, the thought crossed my mind that the proprietor could be racist, but if I don’t credit bad service from the kids at McDonalds to racism, I don’t think it’s valid for me to assume that his bad service is racist.  It might just be me.  (I know I did look at him like he was quite high when he tried to tell me that Bootsy never played with James.)

All that to say that racism is one of the true variables in this world, because we don’t know.  Because most of us don’t have the ability to read someone else’s thoughts, we don’t know whather their aversion to us is because of an aversion to Us writ large, or whether it’s about the individual person.  I know that I tend to think it’s about the individual unless there’s some reason to believe that it’s not, but that’s just me.  I’m pretty sure that I see less racism than many of my friends because I look for it less.  At the same time, I don’t think that they really see racism every time they think they do.  And me personally, I’d rather be the cause for my failures than let somebody else do it. 

But then as I think about it, I think I can think of something that’s more racist than the event I just described, only it’s not really an event.  What’s that they say about the wounds of a friend?  I think that the tendency of some people to disassociate a person with the group because that individual does not show the stereotypical traits of the group is its own form of racism.  Namely, when somebody says, “I don’t think of you as being Black.”  It doesn’t really follow my formula of racism = action + malice, because in those cases, I think that malice is completely absent, but I do think that it’s a more dangerous form of prejudice because it represents a blind adherence to the status quo.  I’ll hafta think about this some more, but right now, I think I’d rather deal with people who dislike me because I’m Black than people who like me individually and therefore see me as not-Black.  Cuz when it gets to that point, it just makes me wonder what would happen if they did start to see me as being Black.