Things that make me angry...part one

I've been wanting to write about race for a few days now and spent so much time worried about "form" that i was not getting "content" on paper...i have more to write but this gets it started...things that have been making me angry recently...



1) The Zero Sum discussion of Trayvon Martin and issues of "black-on-black" violence. If I hear another person tell me that I'm choosing to focus on the Trayvon issue, while turning a blind eye on the "prevalent black on black crime. This presupposes a bunch of things that annoy me. 1) That black people don't know there's a crime problem where black men are getting killed. We know that. We've been LIVING it for quite some time. And we DO mourn those deaths. Just because YOU ALL see those deaths as "Standard Operating Procedure" and don't see the need to discuss these stories in the media, and when they are publicized, they're seen as not "news" as it happens all the time. You don't get to criticize me for not caring and then dismissing the stories when they do happen. 2) Presupposes that my mind isn't complicated enough for complex thought: why can't i recognize that blacks boys being killed at a close to the rate of death for troops in war AND recognize that Trayvon Martin didn't deserve to die and his killer doesn't deserve to be free?  3) that black-on-black crime is some sociological determination unique to the African-American experience. There's lots of black-on-black crime because there's a lot, and i mean A LOT of INTRA-racial crime in the United States, in fact most of the crime is intra-racial. And by the numbers, whites commit more crime than blacks- this means we should be hearing about ALL KINDS of white-on-white crime. But yet, we never do. "My complexion is my protection" some might say of this. So, please, for the love of all that's holy, STFU about this black-on-black crime. If you're looking for a new word, try this one: CRIME. 


2) Crime Evaluators by Race. I've been told my whole life, as many African Americans have been told as well, that you represent MORE than yourself in your interactions with people. I've been reminded in no uncertain terms that the things I do (and subsequently, DON'T do) will reflect not just on me, but that everyone who meets other black people will use what I did to aid in their opinion of blacks in general. In short, I carry the burden of black people in all of my words and deeds. This is a SHITTY PROPOSITION for a kid, or really for anyone. This is all rooted in the idea that the default mechanism on black people was a negative one, and that anything any black ever did would be ascribed to you, and personified onto you, as if you were the actual perpetrator. When Ma Dukes told me that, I didn't really understand and/or believe her. But as I grew older, I began to see the truth in these claims. Being pulled over by cops for "Looking Suspicious" with no quantification or qualification of the claim- leaving it to me to figure out why (odd that I might look suspicious in MY OWN NEIGHBORHOOD but I digress). This is the weight all black people, but black men in particular have to endure. I'm a relatively small, short statured black man, and really even the frailest of people would find me the antithesis of intimidating if they were to see me in a grocery store or in line at the bank. But for some reason, when I'm outside, walking the streets of insert-really-any-town-in-America, I somehow become more intimidating, so much so that women feel the need to lock their car doors as I walk by (really, come fucking on: my desire to PULL YOU OUT OF A VEHICLE TO ASSAULT YOU is actually non-existent, and the degree of arrogance to think that's even a remote possibility is mind-numbing) and to cross the street when they see me (and then cross back once i pass- as if I don't see that- maybe she just crossed the street and forgot why she did- i guess it's possible? no wait, that's probably as likely as being stung by a jellyfish in a koi pond). But I guess I'm supposed to take all this into consideration when I interact with people. That's a lot to have to consider, and a lot of ground to have to give up- why should I have to give you the benefit of the doubt for your assumptions about me? Why should I have to alter my existence because you can't get comfortable in your own skin when I'm around? Seems like we just found out last week: Because you can use those assumptions against me, and to respond with deadly force if you feel the need, and the legal system will give you no recourse. 

By contrast, Whites get the benefit of the doubt. When James Holmes walks into a theatre and shoots up the place, or when Harris and Klebold go into Columbine High School with guns blazing, or when Jeffrey Dahmer kept the remains of some of his kill victims in the freezer for consumption at a later date, nobody ever even THINKS about applying those examples of depravity to the society as a whole. They assume that the cases of white crime are anomalies, mere blips on the radar screen, with no overall tie to each other, By contrast, every negative action black people do is attributed to me upon sight, and then it becomes my affirmative burden to DISPROVE their claims, to disarm their negative interpretations of me before they can project in a way that causes me harm. The ability of whites to dismiss their negative actions and the ability to categorize the collective actions of blacks makes it easier to 1) make blacks the TARGET of more police actions- if every black you see is possible of doing any negative action you can project on them, and whites are evaluated as innocent until proven guilty, then OF COURSE you'll have more blacks in the criminal justice system- also probably explains why white arrests outnumber black arrest by a 2:1 ratio, but more blacks are serving sentences than whites. I guess if LOTS and LOTS of whites are being falsely arrested but ALL blacks that are arrested are guilty and that's why they go to jail, that would justify those numbers. But when you say that sentence aloud, it becomes how obviously inane that statement is. 

3) Colorblind isn't actually colorblind: When you say you want a colorblind society, that hurts me, for a couple of reasons. 1) I'm black/don't let your privilege shine too bright.... Your choice to evaluate or not evaluate that is largely irrelevant to my experience and/or choice to not evaluate that. I have no choice but to be black, and the IDEA that because you want society to be colorblind will ACTUALLY make it colorblind is folly. All you succeed doing in this attempt is to ERASE my color in your attempt to be blind, and requisite experiences i've lived through because of these things, 2) i like being black, and those experiences are integral to who i am. you don't get to just tell me that, to make your lives easier, that my lived experiences shouldn't be evaluated. These things are hard to deal with, but learning about these experiences would make a crisper connection between people. In a colorblind society, the things that make me different and unique are my experiences, but the LIVED experience is so similar that the more you talk to people, the more you find out you're more similar than different. It's THESE moments that allow for people to create empathy, or a connection and ability to recognize someone else's experiences as your own. It's the driving force behind the cultural shift toward the acceptance of homosexuality- as people began to know more people in their families, immediate friend sets, etc, it became harder and harder to deny rights to people that have specific faces you can conjure up. When we don't have these conversations of race, we can't have conversations that give us access to each other and to make those connections from "arguments" to "people"- and it's really hard to deny rights to people- but 3/5 of a person? Much much easier. 

More on empathy and privilege later...

Are they really RIGHTS if they can be taken away?

I haven't done a lot of writing: it's been a pretty busy year. My team is big. My classes are work. Making kids better writers is like making sausage: it's not pretty, it's slow and nobody really wants or needs to see it done. And, I got married, to the most wonderful, caring, and honestly, slightly insane woman in the world (her "insanity" is tied entirely to her decision to marry me). So as much as I'd like to write, it's pretty far down on the totem pole. But then, every once in awhile, something comes up that makes me want to get back on the mic: Civil Rights. 

The premise of the country is that everyone is equal. Well, that all men are created equal. Or, that all white men are created equal. Or is it that all white, land-owning men are created equal? We can see that, although the country believes itself to be founded on equality and justice, it seems to be not particularly inclined to protect either (the true merit of The State is how it reacts when equality and justice come into conflict, but that's for another day and another post). In the last 48 hours, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has ruled on two major civil rights decisions: Fisher v. University of Texas, a decision on Affirmative Action.  and Shelby County v. Holder, a decision regarding the implementation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, considered by many as the legislative  Crown Jewel of the Civil Rights Movement. In both cases, The Court decided to take the path of least resistance, which will lead to an inevitable rollback of the rights protected in both cases, pushing back progress in the area decades in 20 pages or less. 

Fisher v. University of Texas. SCOTUS sends the case back to the lower courts. Says in order for them to view the case, the lower courts need to determine if race needs to be a factor in admissions process. UT has a Top Ten Percent admissions process, which guarantees the top 10% of students in any Texas HS are automatically admitted, and the rest of the spots utilize race as a factor in admissions. The Court did NOT vacate the use of diversity as a compelling interest, which is at the heart of Affirmative Action (note: Scalia and Thomas indicate that if it were asked, they WOULD have voted to vacate Affirmative Action- indicating that the court didn't vacate because they weren't ASKED to- not a confidence builder for the Michigan AA case in the pipes for 2014). However, by kicking this back to the lower court, they are allowing the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals revisit the case. Not exactly the bastion of progress.

Shelby County v. Holder. The Court gives the Legislative Branch The Finger. The US has a history of not allowing full access to the polls. Much of this history has been racially driven. The VRA of 1965 was passed to give teeth to 15th Amendment, which gives all the right to vote regardless of race. Section 4 of the VRA sets a map of of places that have had a history of voting shadiness, and mandates these locales have to go through additional steps to make changes to voting procedures. These changes must go through a "pre-clearance" which is Section 5 of the VRA. The fear was that the pre-clearance would be removed, essentially removing any teeth from the Act. Instead, in an astute political move, they did not touch Section 5, which requires that violators go through a pre-clearance, but instead made the MAP unconstitutional, kicking it back to The Legislature to figure out a new way to figure out who pre-clearance should be applied to.  Pre-clearance WORKS. This is without question- numbers in these areas are higher and even the opponents of the idea say it works. But without THE MAP, then pre-clearance is impossible. It's particularly frustrating- to provide an analogy. There is a sickness- voter denial. Pre-clearance is the medicine. It WORKS. The map is the distribution method. It's not as effective as it could be, but IT'S SOLVING THE PROBLEM. In no world is it logical to stop medicating because your distribution method (which works) isn't as good as you'd like it to be. This also leaves a MAJOR issue in the hands of the US Congress: a group that can't pass a Farm Bill, an Immigration Bill and took 3 months to pass a policy that increased penalties on guys who abuse women (Violence Against Women Act). This was a MAJOR task in the 60's, when race was inescapable, as opposed to now- guaranteeing inaction more than an inept Congress does.

I feel sick. And my fear is that when i write tomorrow, I'll be writing about how the culmination of these decisions makes this look like America 50 years ago...

Back in the saddle again...drive across America...

Well, I told myself I would get started writing again, and since I'm going on a road trip, I figured this would be a good time to start. Off to bed...

race based rant...or why i have no family coming to my wedding...

Well, I'll be getting married in the next 48 hours. Sorry ladies, have to keep those vaginas locked up and save them for some other man. But seriously, it seems like there should be some time I should be nervous about this, but if it hasn't happened yet, i'm pretty sure the nervousness is not going to happen. But even though i'm not nervous, the specter of a wedding does have its ability to weigh heavy on the heart. But for me, it's for a very different reason.

My parents are both from very large families from the deep south- this background is at the core of almost all of their decisions and thus at the core of my values as well. Being from Hope, Arkansas would not be a very big deal: except it's the home of the former President of the United States, Bill Clinton, who happened to be the same age as my mother (this led to many times when people would ask if my mom and President Clinton were classmates, to which the answer was always "Hope was segregated. We never met.). The segregation of Hope is at the core of the rift in my family that never seemed to heal...

...my parents both felt that Hope, as a name of a town, couldn't have been more of a misnomer. My dad viewed the town as pretty hopeless, and left town as soon as he could (as many others had before him, but usually in the military and would return after duty to take their rightful place in Hope- a laborer), except he left to attend the University of California, Berkeley. My father was an exceptional student and I'm sure he was absolutely brilliant and could have just skated by on intellect, but nobody will ever know, as he was the most driven, focused and hard working person I ever met (I sometimes wonder whether that gene just skipped me entirely).  He would have preferred to attend The University of Arkansas, but was not admitted to the engineering department (as the engineering department weren't readily accepting Black students), which forced his hand. The decision to leave Arkansas to attend college (and to not attend a Historically Black College and Universities) was frowned upon, and viewed as a way to distance himself from Hope-which they read as distancing from Black People. It meant that for choosing to pursue an education and make himself a better person, he was evaluated as less black by some and as not black by others. Knowing what i know about my dad, this must have killed him inside, as I have never met a more proud Black man, but also knowing The Man, I know he did what he felt he needed to do to make himself a better person. He moved to CA, got his BS, MS and PhD and carved out a nice life for himself, and was able to provide for himself and his family....my mother knew of my dad in the way you know of the older siblings of your friends. My mom and dad grew up in the same town, and my dad is friends with a couple of my mothers older brothers, through school and sports and general tom-foolery. My mom was absolutely brilliant and, from the words of her siblings, was just bored intellectually (as most of my family was apparently- grandma had granddad leave her when my mom was really young, yet grandma had 8/9 kids with Masters Degrees, PhD's, JD's or MD's, so clearly she did that shit right). There has been no precedent of people leaving to get their education from the area, and the only story my mom knew about leaving was that of my Dad leaving, so she just figured out what he did and followed his footsteps- literally- same classes, same extra curricular activities, similar subjects on the application letter (obviously). And it led to the same result. Except this time, residents of Hope had some empirical evidence to indicate the decision to distance oneself from Hope (my dad hadn't been back but once in 4 years- nobody ever though about how expensive it might be to get from Berkeley to Hope to get home to visit, and the fact that NOBODY came to his graduation from Cal (or from grad school at Stanford) should be indicative of the effort being made on the other end). So when my mom decided to move to Berkeley, they straight up called her a sellout and proclaimed "she'd marry a white man."

My parents met while at Cal, fell in love and the rest ended up history. Their claims of becoming white-washed were dead in the water. Two intelligent, articulate and capable Black people, married and raising a family. You'd think this would be a good thing. But then you'd be "thinking" again, and look at all the problems that's caused in the history of time and man. The family just figured if they didn't become white-washed, then it would be their kids that would become white-washed. Their kids, for whom I am the sole survivor.

I have spent my whole life being treated like i didn't belong by members of my own family. For the most part, my parents DIDN'T go back to Hope. The bitterness felt by both of my parents for their attempts to make themselves better people made the town a place they generally tried to avoid. However, when your parents (mom's mom and dad had both parents) still live in Hope, as does most of your extended family, you have to make your periodic visits. Which meant I had to take visits to Hope, which was a different world from where I grew up and was living at the time (Minnesota), I would be constantly reminded that i was "different" than the other kids in my family (I "talk white", i "play stupid games" (soccer), i'm "always reading", etc.). These are things that I'd always done, and they made me different than most of the "people" i was around. It never made any sense that these issues were, pardon the pun, Black and White. It also meant that, at least once while I was in Hope, someone would make fun of me, pick a fight with me and find out that, despite me being small and "talking white" i wasn't about to let you lay hands on me, and I was more than adept at the art of self-defense (and sometimes opponent attack)- it meant i got to kick the shit out of someone, once a trip, for thinking they could pick on the kid not like them. My parents felt it was a bad influence on me, so at one point we just stopped going, and I haven't been back to Hope in over 20 years. But it does mean that, for the last 20 years, my extended family has been using ME as an example of what happens when you leave Hope. You talk white, you act white and you marry a white woman. Which is at the core for why my family and I are at this point estranged.

I will have no family at my wedding. My immediate family is all deceased, with both my parents being gone for well over a decade. There isn't a time when I don't miss them. But at this particular time, I REALLY REALLY miss them. I'd like my mom to be here to be able to hug Carol, to tell her how happy she was for her and for us and, selfishly, to hug her myself and have her tell me how happy she is for me. I'd just love to see her smile again. I'd love to have my dad here, as it seems that one of the things Dad's want to do most is to talk to their sons the day before they're married. I'd love to take in the wisdom of what it takes to have a happy marriage. I know I have other resources that can offer me this information- I work at a Catholic school and can talk to a priest. Carol's parents have been married some obnoxiously long time. I have many many friends I could lean onto about this. But it seems that your DAD is the person who is supposed to tell you how to do this, in the same way he's supposed to teach you how to be a man....i don't have a lot of extended family I'd even be willing to invite to my wedding, but the only one I did invite won't come. He's in the school of thought that "I shouldn't marry a White woman. I won't object to it, but I won't support it. It'll just have to be one of those things we'll have to agree to disagree about." His distrust of White people, in general, makes it so that, even though he recognizes that I love Carol and that she makes me happy, he can't put aside his disdain for the race, in general, to believe that I could love someone of that race. This is my Dad's twin brother, a man that has played the role of surrogate father for me since my dad died. And he won't come. When push came to shove, and I asked him to explain why, he said this "You can never take the Hope out of you."

Which is why my parents left Hope.  Which is why I am the way I am. Which is why I have no family coming to my wedding.

Totally. Worth. It.

rest in peace, willis...

Note: This is one of those heavy posts.

When I moved to California, I had spent all of my time in a really small private school, and upon moving, enrolled in a slightly larger private school. At no time in my life had I ever consistently spent lots of time in huge classrooms, and as you can imagine, I had never been around a ton of Black people in school in general, and in class in particular (prior to this, I had NEVER been in a class with another person, and only knew other blacks went to school because I had a brother who was also going to the same school). Once I got to public school, I figured out more about life and expectations than I had ever expected.

One of the things I marveled at was the ability for most students to walk among the crowd totally unnoticed- when you go to a really small school (I had a class of 3 and a class of 4 for a full academic year) going unnoticed is actually impossible. But with so many people, I was enamored with the idea that I could go about my day, totally under the proverbial radar. What I didn’t realize that in a big school, things that made you stand out, either physically (really big and strong, or conversely- under 5’ tall) or intellectually (if you’re the dumbest fucker in class or the kid fucking the curve for the rest of the class) make it virtually impossible to skate through the world un-noticed. So you can imagine a kid, 4’11” tall, and a virtual academic all-star who tended to score among the highest scores in a given class, my ability to go un-noticed was non-existent. I was now the short smart kid that fucked up the curve in Math, Chemistry, History and Spanish (never an off the chart English student, felt the kind of writing I was allowed to do was a tad stifling and the writing I currently do was not only not allowed, but openly shunned and mocked as illegitimate (Fuck yourself, Joan Cone), because it was too much like me and not enough like the King’s English (which if you know me, I never stray too far from, even in a motherfucker laced writing sample).

Coupled with this backdrop, it’s important to remember I’m Black. This had at no point in time ever been realized by me as being anything other than matter of fact (I’m Black, I’m also male, short, right handed- story sometime- and kind of obnoxious). It was only upon entering El Cerrito where it really started to play a role. But initially, it was odd for me just to be around the sheer number of Black people I was around. Coming from a county where you’re the only Black FAMILY and going to schools where there were NO Black people, it’s easy to imagine my image of what Black in America was might have been romanticized. I had my family and really The Cosby Show to refer to (didn’t watch much TV at all, and we didn’t live in an area where it mattered, as there were so few PEOPLE where I lived, it didn’t really matter what you WERE, just that you were). So going to EC meant I now would meet more Black people than I had ever imagined- and there was one overarching theme about the experience- I was told, by ALMOST ALL of the Black kids one of these statements:

“You talk white” or “You talk like a white boy.”

“Why you tryin’ to act white? You ashamed of being Black?”

“Man, you an Oreo.”

I had never HEARD any of these accusations, didn’t know Blacks could ever even be accused of acting “white” much less by other Black people. I didn’t even know the Oreo reference and assumed the kid had seen my lunch snack choice. He laughed and told me it meant “Black on the outside, white on the inside.” Another statement I didn’t understand. If this was how this public school shit was gonna work out, I was probably going to be arrested or killed soon, because this was some bullshit.

So I’m the short, smart Black guy that’s harassed in classes for fucking up a curve here and there, I’m literally the shortest person at the school, I’m a year younger (at least) than the rest of the school (skipped grades earlier in life) and now I’m being demeaned by kids who are raping the English language like Jodie Foster was in The Accused and I have nobody to talk to…this is going to be a shit-tastic experience…

…until I walked into freshman Honors World History class. It was the first place I felt a zone of protection, where nobody wanted to give me heat for being a smart kid. It was in this class where I met Willis Abraham…

…and it was a relatively uneventful meeting. Except that he was in the Honors class. One of the things I noticed is that the school did something called “Tracking” where they try to rank students academically and then, based on that ranking, try to get students of like academic skill sets in the same class- allows for kids that need extra help to get it and kids that need to go faster to do that as well- but it does make these determinations and it’s really hard to get into another track (for example, I transferred from a top-tier private school, but was tracked in “average” classes- until my Mother came in and made them make me take a placement test- was in Honors the next day, so I guess it worked out). By the time kids got to High School, most were locked into tracks, and in the Honors track, there were just not very many Black kids. Willis was one of those kids. But he was, for lack of a better term, a different cat. He just operated to the beat of a different drummer, and was unabashedly indifferent if you were with him or against him, as long has he was doing what he felt was right…this starts by being a smart guy…

…for my first significant block of time at EC, I really didn’t speak out- in class or outside of class. those that know me pretty well can see a world where this not speaking thing was standard operating procedure. I was afraid if I opened my mouth people would find out one of two things, both in diametrical opposition: 1) I was as smart as they thought I was and would never want to talk to me, or 2) I was NOT as smart as they thought I was and they wouldn’t want to ever talk to me- seems like an effective catch-22, which meant I NEVER spoke up, even when I felt I had something positive to contribute. I noticed that in these honors classes, as with my classes at the private school, it seemed that students were free to express themselves, and free to be incorrect and learn from their mistakes. After the negative impression I got from the Black kids at the school (I quickly learned that “white” could be interchanged with the term “educated”- which made me WAY WAY more angry with the Black kids- why in the FUCK do “white” and “educated” get to be interchangeable, and why should my Blackness be fucking questioned as inauthentic because I can string together sentences?) it made me kind of gun-shy about being willing to speak up in class (dare I say- in general). And based on where I was, as much as I liked the white kids in my class, and as much as I didn’t feel any of them even could play the same academic sport as I could, it took ANOTHER BLACK KID being willing to speak up, ask questions, be right and especially BE WRONG and not care as long as he got what he needed, gave me the confidence to begin to speak up myself, which I could never do what I’m doing now (teaching Public Speaking) if I hadn’t gotten that impetus to act from a dude that had NO IDEA of the role he played- at least in that instance…

…over the course of high school, he went from being a Black guy in my class to someone I was proud to consider as a friend. As most of my high school friends were trying to really live the role of HIGH school to it’s fullest (and I can not, in good conscience say that I did not enjoy some of those afternoon/evening/weekends myself), Willis was one of my friends I knew I could rely on to have a good time, but one that involved no alcohol or drugs. In a world of intense peer pressure, and among the kids we were taking classes with it was particularly prevalent- lots of those kids in class came from money, which meant they were more willing and able to throw it around on extra-curricular activities. But hanging out with Willis meant none of that, but it also meant you were going in for a fun-filled adventure. I lived next to a Golf Course for years and had never considered buying blocks of ice and riding down the groomed hills of a golf course. I’d never even considered playing “Capture the Flag” much less in an international airport (adding an extra component-trying not to get arrested while playing- a component I did not see coming- which happened a lot). But there were other times too, just chillin’ at his house, with his moms upstairs, watching Trespass (a great flick if you haven’t caught it, I may have to see if I can catch it on Netflix) and talking about just stupid shit- how as a frosh he was happy to have a girlfriend at UCLA: “man getting a woman here is hard, if you’re not Greek or Troy Aikman…” or about how much scandal there was in the local church: “man that pastor gettin’ on the express elevator to hell…” or just how he just LOVED and EMBRACED what life gave him. You have a car but it’s a 1964 Dodge Dart- you probably bitch and complain about it, talking about how all your friends have better cars and why can’t you get your own car, etc. That’s why you weren’t Willis. He took the Dart and OWNED it. Drove it tough, like you’d drive an Escalade. Spoke of it with pride. Drove with his head high. And after awhile, it became an privilege, even an honor, to ride in the Dart, something ONLY Willis could have pulled off.

It is only in his death that I have gotten to reflect back fondly on the times we spent together. But I never really thought about what that time means to me now, and how it was crucial in shaping the person I ended up becoming. I had a lot of “friends” in high school, some of which I still have, some will even read this- and they may be surprised. I only say that as I was surprised as well. I hadn’t really thought about how what he did help me do what I did. I’m pretty sure I told him this once, when I found him on Facebook (I quickly unfriended him, as I had done what I needed to do, and one of the unfriend mistakes I could take back now). I hope he understands what it meant to me and for me.

And I can say, for sure, I will miss my friend.

All Race No Place

I hate being alone. Actually, that’s not entirely true, but that’s due to some semantics that exist for some people, but not for me. You see, I rather enjoy being by myself, that is, having nobody else around me. As much as I hate sitting in traffic on my way to work, I do enjoy getting to delve into my own head and psyche in the stop-and-go traffic that makes the Silicon Valley one of the most sought after places to live in the country (if our rent is indicative of anything). What I hate is the feeling that the thing I think and/or the thing I feel is somehow not a legitimate response.

I know I come from a different social location than most African-Americans- I know this because I have had it reinforced to be, by the African-American community my whole life. One of the things I enjoy most is having African-American women who know I’m engaged to (or at some of those times, dating) a white woman. I generally will get read The Riot Act about how I “turned my back on the race” or how “there are lots of good sistas out there, why you with a white girl?” My answer is simple, and they don’t want to hear it: when I was younger, and I was TRYING to date black girls, they wanted nothing to do with me. I was “an oreo” (which I was also called this evening, on the way home, by a homeless black kid I didn’t have any change to give), someone who was “black on the outside, white on the inside” and thus never given the time of day, much less an opportunity to date someone. Fast Forward 15 years: all those women who blew me off to fuck some roughneck are now single, with a kid usually, and wondering where “all the good black men went…We left...Got tired of waiting...i digress, that will happen sometimes…I was saying I recognize my variant social location, so I realize that this complaint may fall on deaf ears, as most African-Americans don’t get to eat (by choice a lot of the time, but sometimes by limitations) at some of the locations I’ve had specific complaints about. But here we go…

…we were out to the Faculty Dinner for the place I’m working, and we are dining at a fine dining seafood establishment in a hotel. It’s a Friday evening, and the restaurant is pretty busy, and we have a party of 25+. There is a set of orders taken before I arrive, so there’s some food on the table when I arrive (always a plus). When the waiter comes to take orders, I place my orders with him, clam chowder soup, surf and turf (filet- medium rare) and grilled shrimp (the option was shrimp and scallops, I opted for all Shrimp, most others opted for scallops only or both. I also order a Coke. Of this order, the only thing not messed up was the Coke. The soup was, literally, forgotten about (although they took our order on these fancy hand scanner type things which allows them to beam info from kitchen to waiters regarding food), which means 1) we had to ASK OUR WAITER FOR FOOD WE ORDERED, which is not standard operating procedure- I believe we would not have gotten them had we not asked). Now, if this was the only thing they messed up, I’m probably frustrated, but definitely not vocal about it (if I bitched about EVERY possible offense, I’d literally never eat out). When the food comes out, I’m handed a steak and a plate of scallops. Not what I ordered. Maybe they just mixed up the plates. It could happen. I get it. But in light of the first mistake, why should I, once again, give them the benefit of the doubt? I don’t have to assume mal-intent to have this experience be frustrating. To everyone at the table, it’s just a couple of things, why is it a big deal? Here’s why...here are some of the things it is to me…

…it’s being a sophomore at UCSB and trying to move into these cool loft apartments with some of my friends. They ran my credit rating and I didn’t get approved (I was 19 years old and had no credit at all). I assumed it was standard. I find out later they, for the white kids I was to be living with, ran THEIR PARENTS credit (which if they ran my parents credit they’d have found two perfect scores, which gets me in). so either they did something not standard without running my parents credit (shady) or AFTER (criminal). But I gave the benefit of the doubt….or the time when I was at Harrah’s in Kansas City at a debate tournament, and somehow, with like 5 of us, they somehow managed to 1) forget my order, twice and 2) give me the wrong order, twice, while somehow not messing up ANYONE ELSE ALL NIGHT…or the time when we went to a Michelin Star restaurant and they put us behind the Sommonier’s table next to a family with pre-toddler kids…or the time…well, you get the picture- at some point, all these “benefit of the doubts” begin to really just look like some passive aggressive racist shit, rather than a “get out nigger” they just give you, specifically, shitty service, hoping you get the point…

…so it’s really hard for me to just assume that “mistakes happen” and that “it means nothing.” Maybe it’s the “we have to be BETTER than everyone else to get EVEN footing” concept that makes me furious when people, whose FUCKING JOB is to serve you in a reasonable and competent fashion, seem to CONSTANTLY makes mistakes on your stuff. If it was an overarching theme with the restaurant, I kind of get it. But if you fancy yourself to be a nice restaurant, you can’t go 0-3 on my food stuff, not go 0-3 with ANYONE else and have me NOT assume it’s racist.

The benefit, dare I say, privilege of being White is that when incompetence happens to you, you can just assume incompetence. But when it happens to me, my mind CAN’T NOT go to the idea that it could be malicious or hate filled, and yet so passive aggressive. I wish I had that liberty, unfortunately, I don’t get this liberty, and as a reward, I make about .75 to the dollar of a white man doing my job.

Many of you think I’m on some delusional, self-important rampage- wrong. To say it has anything to do with me, specifically, is some bullshit and something I’d have a hard time believing even it was proven to be true. And I don’t think it’s some conscious shit. But I do think it happens, and anyone that tells me it doesn’t has never walked a mile in my shoes.

Black people know what I’m talking about, but for some reason, because it comes out of someone that looks, dresses and sounds like me, it’s given less credence. It’s maddening to be disrespected and disregarded by your own people, because I don’t fit in the mode of what they consider “black. I consider Black people to be My People, and I am aligned with The Struggle of Our People, and I am reminded of my place within that struggle every time I hear a siren pull up behind me. I am reminded every time I walk through a mall and get followed by the same security guard through multiple stores (if this seems specific, it’s because it happened to me going to the Apple Store last week and to a Men’s Warehouse and to the Best Buy, same guard, terrible at tailing people (point is to not be seen). I’m here in town, working for one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. I’m smart. I’m articulate. I have a pocket FULL of cash to buy shit. But to them, I am a joke that my dad used to tell me when I was young, and it didn’t make sense to me at the time…

“What do you call a black man with a PhD. From Stanford in a $1000 suit?” Nigger.

He told me this joke because it was told to him at work. My dad was a Genetic Engineer, with a PhD. from Stanford. And my dad rocked the $1000 suit. He told me this because if he didn’t tell me this at home, and tell me that THIS is what I should expect from people if I ever get to the top of the profession, that I should expect this. And that I should have someone to tell, so he didn’t “kill that motherfucker.” It was the first time I 1) ever saw him curse, 2) ever saw him lose his cool, and 3) ever saw him show me ANY emotion other than Love. It reminded me that life was pretty fucked up, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand why that man said that to my dad. And I wondered why he told me, rather than telling Mom. Sometimes Mom had just had enough, and wasn’t really trying to hear Dad. Maybe she never got how much it fucking killed him inside. When I have really hard days, I just try to remember my Dad, doing things that I can’t ever imagine doing. I feel shitty when I have to hold my tongue to keep the peace (which fucking KILLS me that my being angry about shitty treatment should be anyone’s business- you have the right to disagree with my anger/hostility, but you don’t get to have a say in whether it’s REASONABLE to have that response). 

The duality of being treated like you don't belong by Whites (by assuming that you're over-reacting and making everything about race- [aside: when you're Black, everything IS about race] and not just assuming old fashioned incompetence or just people being assholes) and having Black people discount your experience as inauthentically Black is enough to make me just want to tell EVERYONE to fuck themselves. At the point where I get to feel alone, i don't really want to deal with the bullshit of having to pretend to conform and/or give a fuck what you think about it. 

The irony of it all is all this makes me want to do is sit around, smoke blunts and be the person everyone assumes I am anyway.

some days you just need to shut the hell up

Sometimes, the general idiocy of life is such that you feel compelled to get it on paper, as to provide some kind of proof, to future generations, to avoid such madness. You can only hope that, in it’s reading, that one person, one solitary person, may get the message, and decide to walk into moving traffic or play Russian Roulette, except hoping, praying even, that there really IS one in the chamber, and that you can only hope it blows your whole head off- you never want to go out like Prince’s Dad in Purple Rain. This is a reflection of one of those days…

…as I wake up, I go to work and discover there is a staff meeting at work. I’m not sure what you think of staff meetings, or even if you have them where you work or have ever had them. If not, say a quiet “Thank You, God!” and move on, hoping that your luck will continue. But in the same way that, eventually, you do hit the combination of alcohol and age to get a hangover, you will eventually have to go to the dreaded staff meeting. There are a variety of worlds where I could imagine that me being in a staff meeting could serve some benefit to me, but that would be in a world where anything, anything at all that I thought, wouldn’t be viewed in the same way one might view walking on your dad terrorizing your mom’s snatch like he was named Osama Bin-Ladin. My presence is only required because everyone’s presence is required, meaning my need to be there far outstripped any desire I had to be there. This meeting, we were discussing a logistic issue – we have too many employees to work the allotted slots that exist, but all the workers really want more hours. We batted around a variety of ideas to help resolve the problems- creating more shifts, creating more business to allow for the people that want more work to work more, changing hours of operation to allow for more shifts, etc. But there is a dilemma, we can’t really afford to offer more hours or more shifts, and it’s infeasible to change operational hours to make any of these things happen. One of the topics of discussion that was never broached, in this brainstorming of ideas was the simple, most obvious one: tell them “no, you can’t.” This idea was looked on in the same way the average American might look at a Tijauna donkey show. So the battle begins, about ways to achieve the goals without telling them “no.” So at the end of the conversation, here’s how I read the process: They want to do something we think is a bad idea, can’t afford it economically or execute it logistically. And yet, we’re still here, having a conversation about how to best execute this miserable idea (an idea you don’t agree with, and can’t logistically do or fiscally afford, seems to me to be a bad idea)…this is when I tuned out and thought about getting a sandwich…

…I arrive at the sandwich shop, and looking on the menu, I see a sandwich on the board. It’s $7.95- the most expensive sandwich on the board (Turkey, Bacon and Avocado). I’m not a fan of avocado, so I ask for the sandwich without it. I get the sandwich (which was AWESOME, by the way), and as I get the bill, it seems a little high, so I ask for the receipt- which explains it all. I was charged $8.45 for my sandwich, not $7.95 (this isn’t as big a deal as the general principle of this, as I lose .50 more times a month than I know). I decide to ask, in which they tell me that the $7.95 sandwich is a special (Turkey, Bacon, Avocado) but my sandwich isn’t (Turkey and Bacon) and because it’s not a special, it’s $8.45 ($7.45 for sandwich and $1 for the Bacon). She then asks me if this makes sense. I ask her if the sandwiches are pre-made, to which she says “of course not!”

“Then it makes no sense.”

She seems flummoxed- can’t imagine why. I try to explain to her, that, while this is her restaurant, and she can charge what she wants, and that I can HATE the way she operates, and still buy sandwiches if she doesn’t ban me from the establishment, that I can’t imagine why NOT putting an item on a sandwich costs me MORE money than putting the item on. If the sandwich is pre-made, then it makes sense, as there is no labor issue. Since it takes you product (that costs you money) and time (to put the EXTRA item on the sandwich) to make the sandwich with avocado, it should not cost me MORE to get that stuff NOT on the sandwich. Still, she seems flummoxed. She calls for the manager to talk to me- I just want to get my sandwich and to go somewhere and eat it. I have to re-explain to the manager, who, literally, just REPEATS what the first woman told me. He seems frustrated by my general musings, and is quickly becoming annoyed. I remind him that they can do whatever they choose, and the only reason this is still an issue is because you all want me to agree with you, and it doesn’t make sense to me, for the reasons I explained. I’ve also ALREADY PAID YOU, so it’s clearly not a big deal, but one I was curious enough to ask about. I leave the shop with my sandwich, but with no resolution…

…so let’s see how this worked- twice today, I wanted to say something, told myself it was a terrible idea, knew it would fall on deaf ears, and at the end, I would wish I hadn’t spoken up in the first place. And, yet, for some reason, I felt the need to speak my mind anyway. If insanity is defined as repeating an action and expecting a different result, then…