Josh (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} panaphobic) wrote,@ 2006-01-03 15:20:00 |
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On Race
Several moderately connected thoughts. First off, there's this MeFi thread which saw me being probably more of an ass than I should have been. But there has been a change in how liberals (and PJ O'Rourke) view the issue of race, and the candor with which we're willing to address it.
Similar to how I believe conservatives view sex, it seems like there's a patina of politeness that's been laid across race that smothers the superficial but ignores the truly dangerous.
Second, by way of vaguely offensive: An anecdote from grocery shopping. Amy and I were at Busch's and saw some other variety of bananas (shorter and browner), and Amy gave a brief rundown on them versus Cavendish bananas, which are the main variety.
Walking a couple of steps behind her, I say "Cavendish would be a good name for a black boy," and get the most horrified look from a 40-something white woman with "quirky" eyeglasses who was testing melons.
Well, Cavendish WOULD be a good name for a black kid. Just sayin'.
Third, while over at our friend Raquel's place, a couple of her friends popped into town on their way from Beaver Island to Pittsburgh. Mike, the husband of her friend (Cathy, I think? I don't remember her name) from high school, had just inherited a working tobacco plantation in Virginia, and was kind of coming to terms with it. It was huge (over 8,000 acres in his part alone), and had come to him through two deaths within a month. He now owned several antique guns, two airplanes, two mansions...
"And about 180 black people."
Yeah, he just said that he now owns 180 black people. Our mouths must have been agape, because he started to explain it (and/or equivocate).
Truncated version: Before the Civil War, the family had owned slaves ("because if they had freed them, slave hunters would have just rounded them up, even though the family didn't really want to own slaves." Magnaminous white people, helping blacks again), and after the war had kept them on because "none of them wanted to leave." Now they get paid between $500 and $1000 a month, and get free housing, health care and primary education (and have a fund for college, though Mike says that none of them have ever left).
He went on to refer to them as "my black people" for the rest of the evening.
If I had felt like I'd known him better, I might have called him out on it. But instead, it was, like, 15 minutes into meeting him. I did whisper to Amy "I think if you own them, you're supposed to call them African-Americans."
The entire evening was surreal. Soon they left, blaming his cat allergies (and not mentioning to their daughter that, y'know, his eyes might have been red because he was smoking pot in the basement...) and I was still at a loss. At least Raquel and Amy realized how fucked up it was...
Several moderately connected thoughts. First off, there's this MeFi thread which saw me being probably more of an ass than I should have been. But there has been a change in how liberals (and PJ O'Rourke) view the issue of race, and the candor with which we're willing to address it.
Similar to how I believe conservatives view sex, it seems like there's a patina of politeness that's been laid across race that smothers the superficial but ignores the truly dangerous.
Second, by way of vaguely offensive: An anecdote from grocery shopping. Amy and I were at Busch's and saw some other variety of bananas (shorter and browner), and Amy gave a brief rundown on them versus Cavendish bananas, which are the main variety.
Walking a couple of steps behind her, I say "Cavendish would be a good name for a black boy," and get the most horrified look from a 40-something white woman with "quirky" eyeglasses who was testing melons.
Well, Cavendish WOULD be a good name for a black kid. Just sayin'.
Third, while over at our friend Raquel's place, a couple of her friends popped into town on their way from Beaver Island to Pittsburgh. Mike, the husband of her friend (Cathy, I think? I don't remember her name) from high school, had just inherited a working tobacco plantation in Virginia, and was kind of coming to terms with it. It was huge (over 8,000 acres in his part alone), and had come to him through two deaths within a month. He now owned several antique guns, two airplanes, two mansions...
"And about 180 black people."
Yeah, he just said that he now owns 180 black people. Our mouths must have been agape, because he started to explain it (and/or equivocate).
Truncated version: Before the Civil War, the family had owned slaves ("because if they had freed them, slave hunters would have just rounded them up, even though the family didn't really want to own slaves." Magnaminous white people, helping blacks again), and after the war had kept them on because "none of them wanted to leave." Now they get paid between $500 and $1000 a month, and get free housing, health care and primary education (and have a fund for college, though Mike says that none of them have ever left).
He went on to refer to them as "my black people" for the rest of the evening.
If I had felt like I'd known him better, I might have called him out on it. But instead, it was, like, 15 minutes into meeting him. I did whisper to Amy "I think if you own them, you're supposed to call them African-Americans."
The entire evening was surreal. Soon they left, blaming his cat allergies (and not mentioning to their daughter that, y'know, his eyes might have been red because he was smoking pot in the basement...) and I was still at a loss. At least Raquel and Amy realized how fucked up it was...
