I was just down at the local ghetto food mart to purchase some coconut water and aloe drink for my 9:45 p.m. breakfast. Outside the store I ran into Richie, a retired man who has lived in this neighborhood for 70 years.
Once again, he had been shoved to the ground by a black person on his way to the market, and despaired of entering—indeed feared entering.
“You know I was nine years old in nineteen-sixty-four when they passed that bill making everyone equal before the law and giving out all the free stuff. I cheered. My parents told me it was about time, a good thing that everybody would be treated the same.
“Now look at this shit. These mobility people [handicapped blacks collecting SSI for the results of overdoses, obesity, and gunshot wounds] shove me off to the side. I’ve been knocked down on this parking lot lots of times, always by them.
“When I was a kid my mother told me about Rosa Parks, what a brave lady she was, getting on that bus and taking the front seat. Now, when I get on the bus, I can’t get a seat unless some black kid says I can have a seat.
“Last year, I was in this store buying a pack of chicken that was on sale. There is a limit—one to a customer—one for me, not for them. I reached for a pack of chicken and this back lady hit me and said, ‘that’s mine!'
“I said, ‘I don’t see your name on it.’
“She cussed me and screamed for more chicken, because if you’re black the rules don’t apply.
“A few years ago I was at this front check out—right in there before they opened up the other express lane. I had two sodas when this gigantic black man, so tall I could barely touch his shoulder, stepped in front of me with a watermelon. I tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, you cut in front of me.’
“He was half my age and twice my size, and said, ‘White boy, you’re in the wrong neighborhood.’
“I grew up in this neighborhood. I asked the store manager to do something about it and he said he could open up another register for me, but that if any blacks cut in front of me there was nothing he could do about it.
“I grew up here, and now I can’t even get served in the local places because every black person has the right to cut in front of me, to shove me down to the ground when I’m walking too slow, when I’m in their way. When I was a boy I thought Rosa Parks was a hero, thought that I would live in great times, that people would be treated fairly. But after what I’ve been through, if I could go back to that bus when Rosa Parks decided not to get up and move, I’d a shot her. I’d a shot Rosa Parks. Maybe shooting Rosa Parks would have meant I could ride the bus today, in my old age.”
Richie said, apologetically, as I walked off, “I didn’t mean to run you off. It’s just that living like this gets to me, being run over where I grew up.”
I don't like Richie, and he knows it. That doesn't mean that I'm okay with what's been done to Richie.
What's wrong with Richie, why is it that you don't like him? He comes across as an okay enough person in your piece, even sympathetic in the contextualized way in which he tells about the hard luck he has run into.
Richie complains a lot. Granted, he has very real grounds for complaint. I am guilty of being rather callous towards him merely because he is weak, male and vocal—a combination of traits I regard with distaste.
Okay, I understand you better now. Any two of the three traits you mention would be okay (in varying degrees). But all three of them is one too many, from your urban warrior perspective.
Honestly, after walking away from him while he sought solidarity with a younger member of his diminished tribe, I did feel wrong about that.
I think you understand me better now than I do.
Interesting. So your disdain for Richie arises from the fact that he complains a lot and you think it unbecoming for a white man to be a complainer? That is a very Anglo-Saxon Puritan attitude James. LOL! It has always been part of Anglo-Saxon culture that "one mustn't complain" and that it is particularly improper for men to complain out loud. That's the main reason the Anglo-Saxon Protestants wouldn't let Jews join their country clubs years ago, they simply could not abide the Jews’ constant complaining and “sharing” of their feelings and health issues. It just got on the WASP's nerves too much. But of course that is officially regarded in the mainstream as a very bigoted attitude today (although our Northeastern Puritan betters still haven't really shed that sentiment). This custom isn't serving Anglo Whites well in today's grievance and identity politics either, as one contributor to VDare observed: “Our values have failed to change with the times. American culture emphasizes self-reliance and individual achievement over teamwork and community. We’re taught to remain tough and silent in the face of adversity and that complaining on our own behalf is a sign of weakness....Nonwhites and Jewish people are not restrained by such stupidity and effortlessly organize for their own defense.” vdare.com/letters/a-wasp-reader-writes-on-why-whites-dont-react-to-anti-white-rhetoric.
Richie’s predicament illuminates a larger issue, a question we had over 50 years ago at the start of Civil Rights movement: How would black people treat white people if they ever got the upper hand? When white Liberals were wont to point out the many injustices black people in America suffered, realists would reply that throughout history every ethnic group had their own private hell and thus if rolls had been reversed at the founding of the country there is no reason to believe that blacks would have treated whites any better. Probably not even as well. Now we have proof. When they are in the majority blacks even tyrannize and harass their own people. Where I grew up we weren’t taught those old wives tales about black people. My state was settled by Liberal Germans, Scandinavians and New Englanders, people who believed in the brotherhood of all men. We had little contact with black people. Consequently we were very impressed by the discipline and peaceful behavior of Martin Luther King’s followers. Their restraint gave the lie to the stories that the white segregationists told about black behavior and made the segregationists sound like imbeciles as well as bigots. As someone who was alive and aware during this period and who heard MLK’s “Dream Speech” live on TV and I can tell you the deportment of MLK’s followers had a great deal of influence on white people’s support for black civil rights back then. But years later as we middle class white folks in the interior came more and more into contact with black folks, particularly in the big city, we experienced very different behavior. Behavior that one became weary of in a hurry. So what happened? Is it nurture or nature? Is the bad behavior the result of culture or is it hardwired into their heads? At this point I’d have to surmise that it is equal parts of both. But certainly there is no hope for any positive change in race relations as long as The Woman rules our country and benefits from the strife.
Okay Jeremy, this is worthy of an article post, so expect more uncompensated fame to waft your way.
Yes, as a low class catholic I appear quite the stoic heretic.
My dilemma is this.
As the last white man in many portions of my community, aggravated by the fact that my former chattel is running wild, and that I have still not located the remnants of my command—not even the bugler, though I have thankfully located my saber—I cannot appear to be weak in the presence of the multitude of liberated blacks that were milling about Richie and I. I found his lack of warrior spirit to be unbecoming, and corrosive of the myth of my racial battle superiority. If he were a young man I might have slapped him and said, "Do not unman yourself so in front of the darkies, old boy—stiff upper lip and all that rot!"
But, I behaved, to my shame, as if I were in a zombie movie and he was rattling the zeek dinner bell, and made off before I too was implicated as food—sour dough, I suppose.
Ok James. Like Herzog, I better understand the context of your actions. I surmise then, that much as one might sympathize with Richie on a human level, he failed to understand that he was so deep in “enemy territory” that it was very dangerous for him to complain out loud about his mistreatment at the hands of “the enemy”. He was imperiling you both by not speaking more quietly. Not only did the black folks around him not care a wit about what was done to him, but if they overheard him, one or more of them might take umbrage and come up to "give him something to really cry about". And then you would, like it or not, be drawn into the fracas, to suffer who knows what consequences. I can see how one might feel they would have to throw whiney Richie out of the metaphorical sled to keep the wolf pack from overtaking them. Does that sound like a reasonably accurate assessment James? I suspect your zombie analogy is probably more accurate than most of us would think possible in the real world. Certainly those of us on the outside cannot relate to what it is like to live and work in such an environment. A moral no-mans-land where people go around bullying and mistreating old men. Sadly Richie is not physically and mentally tough enough to play the role of urban warrior that has been thrust upon him. Like they say it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. It is no doubt hard for him to accept the reality that the neighborhood where he grew up has changed into something completely abnormal and totally unsafe.
Had Richie gotten me in a fight with the local hoodrats, or God forbid one of the silverbacks, I would have put his crying ass to good use by shoving him head first into the nearest foe while I ran up his withered back and jammed my thumbs into the eyes of the guy he was falling into.
Seriously.
On the upside, Richie's injuries could be used as an excuse for any excessive force, such as nose biting, ball ripping, and jumping up and down on ankles necessary to make up for my diminishing powers. He would also go down in Harm City history as the oldest meat shield on earth! Richie would become a hero!
P.S. To put it more succinctly. I can see now that your problem with Richie was that he was not thinking tactically and maintaining situational awareness. He was probably not keeping his voice down as he lamented his condition to you on the sidewalk in front of the store. Thus he was putting you both in danger of getting into a confrontation leading to a street brawl with any number of the perpetually hostile and angry denizens of the black ghetto. Out on the street in public was simply not an appropriate venue for him to share with you the troubles he was having with black people and how he would like to go back in time to "shoot Rosa Parks" so he can ride on the bus in the present day without being bullied and harassed. James, you frequently mention that the secret to your safety in your dangerous neighborhood is thinking tactically and staying alert, and further, that you are frequently thwarted in your efforts to maintain a safe, tactical posture by fellow whites you encounter who are afflicted with normalcy bias and cannot seem to accept the fact that they are in an environment full of people who want to rob and hurt them and need to take appropriate precautions. Kind of like this situation: examiner.com/article/cody-the-dachshund-alligator-kills-11-year-old-dachshund-5-seconds-park
I guess it would be analogous to being on patrol in Fallujah and having your fellow patrol members constantly try to engage you in conversation while you are scanning the vicinity for lethal threats. I must say I often felt safer overseas than I do in many of America's major cities. In Bosnia and Iraq, everywhere I went I was surrounded by strong men with guns; whereas, in the crime-ridden American cities I had to go alone and unarmed. All I could do was endeavor to maintain situational awareness and not wander too close to the water at the "boat ramp".
Nailed it, Bro!
P.S.S. Oh, and never verbally engaging either. Do not respond to any remarks, comments or taunts made to you by the ghetto dwellers. I guess we cannot emphasize that enough now, can we James?
I dispense this advice dozens of times per week—ah, hmm—verbally. It never ceased to amaze me that people would engage stupid, and emotionally volatile criminals in conversation unless they were covering them with a gun or cuffing them with the knee in the a small of the back!
It was once my job to so engage such folks in conversation, and it is a hazardous nightmare I wish on no human being.
James, it must be enormously frustrating to have people constantly ask for your advice and then completely ignore it. This more than accounts for your dismissive attitude toward whites who get into trouble in the Hood as a direct consequence of their own inattention and misjudgment. Not to mention failure to follow your advice to think and act tactically. If you're in the Hood, "whitey boy, you're in the wrong neighborhood". It’s the combat zone where the aggressor sets the rules and the rules are that it's fair game to attack you. In fact, the criminologists have even devised a term to describe this circumstance called "Routine Activity Theory": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routine_activity_theory . In other words, it is accepted as routine for whites to be attacked or otherwise victimized in majority black neighborhoods. Routine Activity Theory implies the absence of a "capable guardian", so it is a given that the cops will be no help at all to you there. The final lesson learned from "Richie's White Wednesday" is that if you are a white person residing in the Harm City Hood and you seek Colonel Lafond's protection from the hood-rats, you must place yourself under Colonel Lafond's orders and follow his instructions implicitly. Especially no damn fool questions, like "why"? Why? Why? Because! That's why!
Jeremy,
Thanks so much for the RAT info.
Also, should I finally locate my troop, at least the bugler, I could use a staff sergeant!
Stay to the Right, Mister White.