Entry 516: Micro-Anecdotes Of Racism From My Past

Like many Americans I've been doing a lot of thinking about race the last few weeks.  In so doing my mind will frequently stumble upon a moment from my past -- a snippet of a memory -- in which I acted in a racist way or stayed silent while somebody else did.  I wanted to write some of them down.  I'm not sure why.  I'm not seeking absolution, and I certainly don't want this to come off as a wannabe version of those cringey "I Take Responsibility" pronouncements.  I mean, most of this stuff happened when I was a child and literally didn't know any better -- or if I did, I didn't yet have the self-confidence or verbal skills to express it.  So, this is not a moment of catharsis for me.  These things have just been on my mind, and I like to write what's on my mind on this blog.  It's as simple as that, I suppose.

Age 10: I was playing the video game One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird with a friend and his parents at their house.  We were taking turns being the characters, and each time my friend, who was a few years older than me, was Dr. J., he would start jokingly "acting black" -- mock break dancing and talking faux-jive.  He and his parents were laughing at it and having so much fun, so I was laughing and having fun too, and it was all a big joke.  When I went home, I tried to recreate the moment for my dad by doing all the things my friend was doing, but he cut me off and told me it wasn't funny to behave that way.  I'm not saying my dad was "woke" in 1987, but he was on the right side of these things more often than not.

Age 12: So was my sister.  There were a couple times she set me straight.  Once a friend of ours who was her age (three years older than me) came over to our house with two pet rabbits.  They had sleek black fur, so he named them Spear and Chuck.  "Get it?" he said, "Spear-Chuck-er."  My sister was not amused, and they got into an argument, and I reflexively took his side, because he was the "cool" older boy, and my sister was my sister.  After he left, my sister called him a "racist dick" and stormed off to her room.  I think even back then I knew deep down that she was probably right.

Age 13: Another time I told my sister a derogatory joke, and she said it was racist and not funny, and I got really defensive and tried to argue that the joke was actually making fun of stupid people, not black people, but she wasn't having it.  I never conceded the point, but I also never told the joke again to anyone.

Age 13: I rooted hard for Rex Chapman in the 1990 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, solely because he was the only white guy in it.  (Years later, however, Chapman became sports-enemy number one for me, because he hit an amazing buzzer beater against my Sonics in the playoffs.  But now he seems like a cool dude on Twitter -- he's been outspokenly in favor of BLM -- so retroactively I don't mind that rooted for him.)

Age 14: Speaking of sports, my favorite defensive player to use on Tecmo Super Bowl was Rod Woodson.  He's awesome on that game, but I think a big part of the reason I liked using him is because he's depicted as white on it.  (He's mixed race in real life.)  I also loved using white wide receiver Ricky Proehl.

Age 15: Speaking of Tecmo Super Bowl, the same friend with the rabbits came over once while I was playing it.  I was using the Washington Redskins and for whatever reason the 8-bit graphics made the black guys on their team look super dark-skinned.  So, my friend started calling them the Washington Ethiopians (which, if you think about it, is somehow less offensive than their actual name).  At this point, I was starting to figure things out a tiny bit, so I asked him to stop, and he gave me a long spiel about how it's okay for white people to use slurs toward black people because they use them towards one another.  I didn't say anything else.  I just awkwardly waited for him to leave.

Age 15:  Oddly enough, however, I never once heard this guy use a racial slur in the presence of anybody other than his white friends.  In fact, the only time I really remember him interacting with a black person at all, he was totally obsequious toward him.  We were at the mall, and we saw this black kid who was the star of the football team (he actually went on to have a brief stint in the NFL), and my friend said hi to him, and the kid said hi back.  Afterward, my friend was acting like he was this kid's right-hand-man because he so much as said hi to him.  That was his way.  He deified the cool black kids at school and black celebrities and bumped rap music, but then he would say a bunch of ignorant, racist shit in his normal white life.  He was one of those guys.  

Age 16: I went over to the house of this girl I liked to pick her up for one of the first real dates I ever went on.  Her mom (who was also my old algebra teacher) and her stepfather were getting ready to go to a football game at a nearby inner-city high school.  "Well, we're headed to Africa-country," she said.  "Hopefully we win, and more importantly, hopefully we don't get jumped in the parking lot!"  It definitely made me uncomfortable (aside from the fact that "Africa-country" makes no sense, since Africa is already a collection of many countries), but my date was completely unphased, so I just let it slide.  For many reasons, we didn't date long.

Age 16: I got a video camera for Christmas, and I would use it to make these little silly skits and monologues.  One time, shortly after watching Blazing Saddles, I made one in which I played an old-school Southerner dandy, who was making a "can't we all just get along" PSA, but it was terrible because he was actually super racist.  As I recall, it was very cleverly written ("as I recall" being the key phrase there), but I used the N-word in it several times.  To be clear, it was a satire against racism, but still -- not cool.  Thankfully, I had enough sense to destroy the tape a few days later after waking up in a panic about it.  (I've always had a guilty conscience.)  Also, I can't remember ever using that word since then, in any context.  I even change it to "brother" when I'm silent rapping along to a hip-hop music: Hated on by most these brothas with no cheese, no deals and no G's.  That's how I say it in my head. 

Age 26: I accidentally, might have used a variant of that word one other time, and it was truly mortifying.  At the time I was dating this black woman (yeah, I'm just gonna casually drop that in there, even though it's not really relevant to the story), and she told me this joke: Why does Snoop Dogg need an umbrella?  Fo' drizzle, fo' shizzle.  It's kind of a cute joke (a play on this saying).  So, I told it to this black guy I used to watch football with at a neighborhood bar, only I fucked it up, and I said, "Fo' drizzle, my nizzle."  It was one of those things where as it was coming out of my mouth I knew I was saying it wrong, but I couldn't stop it.  He gave a contrived half-chuckle, and I couldn't tell if it signified "corny joke" or "ignorant white boy."  I thought about explaining that I meant to say something else, but I figured that would just make it worse.  So, instead I said something like, "Whoa... did you see that run by Jamaal Charles in the Chiefs game?" and things went back to normal... I think.

Age 33: Vacationing in New Zealand a guy at a bar used a racist slur in referring to Barack Obama.  But being a grown man at this point, I did not let that shit fly.   I actually wrote about it on this blog and rereading the entry made me sad -- in no small part because it reminded me that we once had a president whom was actually worth sticking up for.

On a side note, when I went back and found that entry, I also chanced upon something I wrote about Colin Kaepernick, and I gotta say, I pretty much nailed that take back then.  I stand by it all today.

Until next time...