This morning I had considered writing an article about the death of the ‘White Supremacy’ movement, a movement that once had me in its crosshairs, but proved too feeble to kill me, though they did leave my cousin for dead by a riverbank—naked in the snow with a head injury. But I said, “No LaFond, we are not going into the racial snake pit this week.”
Here I sat, writing a book review, twenty minutes ago, when Dylan, my roommate’s adorable bimbo girlfriend, opened the door to my room, after a polite knock and mousey inquiry, and announced that we would be having a male house guest.
I looked at her as if to say, 'So what?'
Understand that I say hello and goodbye and otherwise have no social intercourse—or intercourse of any other kind—with my five housemates. I do not even use the kitchen.
She goes on to say, “Well, he’s black.”
I said, “And?”
Keep in mind that in the four years I have lived here there has only been three black people to visit this house: all three my friends.
She said, “Well, I didn’t want you to say anything.”
“I don’t use that word! Talk to your old man about that. I don’t use the N-word.”
She then tried to imply that I was as racist as her old man, my long time friend and roommate, who does not dislike all blacks, just the criminals, which he refers to in the same unfortunate manner that they refer to themselves. She did so by saying, “Well, there have been conversations here.”
I cut her off, “Talk to your old man. You don’t have to worry about me.”
Now, the only conversation I had referring to black people recently, was when her old man gave me a hard time for wearing a Black Dynamite T-shirt and said, “You know it’s a miracle the yos haven’t killed you yet.”
I just responded, “I have immunity as an honorary African American.”
Was that an insult?
I date black women, and have been the target of more white supremacist violence in Baltimore than the entire 400,000 strong black community combined. Just this morning Big Earl passed me on the sidewalk and called me “Brutha”, not even with the ‘er’ suffix, but with the ‘a’ ending.
But apparently, the next time a crew of five black men start working over every lone white caught on foot in my neighborhood I suppose I will have to come home from my latest victim interview and say to my white friends, “By the way Dylan, there are five men running down and stumping people between nine and eleven at night.”
What is more racist, letting everybody assume that all violent crime is committed by blacks, by withholding the race of the suspect when he is black, or just repeating the victim’s account that ‘it was five black dudes’?
The fact is most white people that I have contact with are afraid to discuss black people, or even use the word black or African American without first checking to see if blacks are within earshot. Half of the whites I know now insist that ‘black’ is a racial slur, and that only African American is polite.
Could you imagine a world where blacks were not allowed to discuss white people in pubic, and had to call us European Americans or else face a justifiable beat-down?
What is the matter with me saying, “You know that elderly black gentleman down the street saved Ethen when he yelled at those three knuckleheads that were stomping him”?
It is already ‘against the news’ to identify the attackers as black.
When will it be against the news to identify the good citizen as black?
When will it be against the law?
One of my black friends had difficulty—once again—signing his mixed race daughter up for school, because she claims that since she’s half white and half black she should not have to mark black on her registration form.
That girl is not allowed to acknowledge her white mother and I’m not allowed to say, “The men in the 76 Monte Carlo that are stomping out lone white men on the sidewalks in Hamilton are black and in their early to mid twenties?”
How long before it is considered ageist to mention the age of a suspect?
I do recall 10 months ago warning my roommates about the rash of rundowns and drive-up gang muggings by clicks of black men and youths. Maybe that was what has her thinking I’m a racist. It seems every time there is a news report of a black killing a white in Baltimore race is not mentioned. The one violent crime I can recall in which the race of the suspect was mentioned over the course of the past year was committed by a white man.
My black friends want to know what the people that are looking to rob them look like. In fact, our older black neighbors take pride in warning the whites who walk by about suspicious ‘knuckleheads’ they have seen driving around the neighborhood or ‘skulking about up to no good.’
It is quite clear that we are not permitted by our media masters to just be human beings. I can deal with that as bad as it tastes. But, to go so far in the protection of one group’s identity as to make the very mention of their race or ethnic group taboo, while other races and ethnic groups are publicly discussed?
What is the logic behind that?
Or is it an agenda?
What will be the unintended consequences behind making the polite, unbiased, even complimentary, discussion of black men by whites, taboo?
We are already there: a black man shooting a white man is not national news; a white man shooting a black man is national news; a black man shooting a black man does not even constitute worthy local news unless there is a human interest angle like the victim being a 4.0 student.
Whose agenda is this that was so empty-headedly echoed in the doorway to my room by the dainty little mouth of Dylan?
Where is the agenda of the taboo black man going to take us as a society?
It’s not going to take me anywhere. Because I’m going to keep referring to American men of African ancestry according to the term their grandfathers fought for when I was a little boy. I have not met many men the color of fresh asphalt, just like I have not met many the color of driven snow. But most of those I have known—up into the hundreds—have preferred to be referred to as black. So I’m sticking with that, whether you pasty white guilt-ridden liberal hipsters like it or not.
