“Gonna throw this drink back.
Gonna have anotha roun’
—You hear me, Jack?
‘Cause I closin’ this place down!”
-Old Mo, 7/19/15
I was invited this weekend, at the last moment, to a birthday party at a bar for a 72-year-old man. My friend Hawk was one of the men throwing the party, and as he put it, “I’m, but a tyke, at age sixty-two, to these old fellas here.”
The men were casually, and not flamboyantly, well dressed, mostly with fedoras and straw hats that would not have been out of place a hundred years ago. I was the youngest man by a long shot, and the whitest, and this truly did not matter an iota, as I was introduced as a boxing coach, and immediately assumed oracular responsibilities as the gathered fight fans tried to recall a famous Puerto Rican fighter whose name was a byword for heroics. The men shook their heads in shame that Floyd Money—“coward on a jet plane”—now represented what they had all grown up believing was the fistic art that defined their race as a vital strand of the American scene.
It was thought that I—boxing historian suddenly in their midst—would know. All eyes were on me as the fighter we all recalled—a young fellow really—was in our mind’s eye wearing the flag of his semi-autonomous island, but his name failing to form on our tongues.
I broke the ice with a blatant attempt to bond with my new acquaintances at the expense of a third ethnic group. “We can momentarily forgive ourselves, gentleman, in light of the fact that there are only ten Puerto Rican last names.”
Laughter
I finally scraped the name out of the ruins of my mind, and, recalling a recent conversation with a lady over a bowl of rice [My roommate always ate Uncle Ben’s, and the bilingual label says Tito Ben.] I declared, Felix “Tito” Trinidad—named after another island if you can believe that.”
The men pumped their fists, elated that, between the three of us we managed to stave off the cultural rot among the aged that stems from long-term memory loss.
As the eldest man patted me on the shoulder I said, “Tito is slang for ‘Uncle’ in Spanish, and Felix means ‘The Lucky One.’”
We had a brief conversation in which my opinion of the April riots was asked. We stood in agreement that the press had completely mischaracterized the event, and that, as Hawk said, “It was a bunch of thugs and hoodlums—no good malcontents who ain’t got nothin’ and were just taken advantage of a bad situation to commit their crimes. I tell you it burns me up that the higher ups and the media always have to get behind the worst elements of the community—those who don’t even know what community is!”
The conversation switched to boxing and stayed there. In the mean time the Puerto Rican dude who was setting up the sound system came around.
Soon the dean of the crowd, nearly 80, sauntered in and took a seat. Drinking with white guys, it’s usually just beer, sometimes beer with a shot of this or that, and occasionally the liquor drinker. With black guys there is a mix of these types, tilted toward the liquor drinker. Most, however, favor drinking a beer, and sipping an iced whiskey at the same time.
The old fellow sat down in his beige casual suit and fedora, took a sip of beer, and then looked at the iced drink and chanted:
“Gonna throw this drink back.
Gonna have anotha roun’
—You hear me, Jack?
‘Cause I closin’ this place down!”
He then downed the drink and called for another as he set the glass down.
The conversation between Hawk and I then turned toward our mutual friend Quinn, and the The GQ Mugging Inquest, With Testimony From.
I informed Hawk that Quinn took a hit in the ego after reading his copy, feeling that he had come off as a wimp, where I saw him as the hero of the story.
Hawk admitted, “Yeah, I do tend to be a little hard on him, but he needs it. He’s not a fighter. So if he’s goin’ to dress so darned slick he needs to be alert, vigilant in his mind. These young ones out here today give no second chances. They’ll just take an unawares man down.”
He then asked me why I thought it was worthwhile recording the leisure time conversations of older black men.
“Men of action, and men of means—white men of perhaps two hundred to one hundred years ago—would gather on occasion in what were called ‘drawing room discussions’ in the appropriate room of the host’s mansion, or, in America, at less formalized places such as this bar. These men would often have rivalries, as well as shared interests, and the discussion might often come down to a kind of hearing on a man’s wild assertion, or perhaps an unpopular opinion; to kind of serve as a conversational spark.”
“Now, white men of today either speak of their occupation or business, or, most likely sports. You have bitching about work or business, or, particularly between strangers, nothing but a discussion about celebrity athletes, essentially talking about the doings of others with more passion than they would speak on their own pursuits.”
“Your young black dudes of today basically boast, as in rap.”
“The masculine demographic that I see upholding the ancient tradition of powerful men holding such discussions are older blacks, predominantly of the age to have moved up from the South in the fifties or sixties.”
Hawk then interjected, “You mean we are keeping alive the ways of our former masters?”
I concurred, “It would follow that the man assigned to serve the drinks at such venues in the previous age might pass down to his descendents a reverence for a masculine fraternity that treasured the higher values of his masters."
I looked over to the man who had just declared he would close the bar tonight, and saw a tall pretty girl a third his age, leaning up against him, without wearing the revealing clothes and phony hair of most of her peers. Momentarily I thought he might be quite a lady’s man. Then it became obvious that she was his granddaughter. Soon other women were bringing homemade food through the door and I excused myself lest I drink too much to write about it.
>Now, white men of today either speak of their occupation or business, or, most likely sports. You have bitching about work or business, or, particularly between strangers, nothing but a discussion about celebrity athletes, essentially talking about the doings of others with more passion than they would speak on their own pursuits.
Well, that's because to be a white man and be overheard engaging in Crimespeak means the loss of employment and general ostracism. And what is Crimespeak is subject to arbitrary and instant redefinition.
There are two ways to deal with this:
1) taqiyyah, a constant and conscious deception of those around you who are not in your inner circle as to your beliefs. Aside from Shi'a living under Sunni rule, a good example of taqiyya was exhibited by the Marranos/anusim, forced converts to Christianity who continued as cryptojews-Afghan Pashtuns also fall into this category. Taqiyyah requires a constant conscious effort which is quite draining-even for a professional spy or undercover cop, let alone your typical schmoe. More than that, it requires an inner circle, preferably a large one, a community. The entire point of the 20th century policies towards American whites was the destruction of communities by policies broadly similar to those of the Assyrians and Babylonians, namely, uprooting, resettlement, destruction of key infrastructure and inconvenient community leaders (the Slaughter of Cities is a brick of a book that details this extensively). Finally, taqiyyah requires a cohesive core of beliefs that you hold to while professing other beliefs. Since American whites have had it explained to them by authority figures since age 3 that beliefs are totally subjective, maaan, and the only one we can know is true for sure is that mean people suck, that's missing.
Even if you have all these things, taqiyyah is corrosive. Eventually, the anusim became the Catholics of New Mexico and Colorado who had a few quaint, inexplicable customs, and the Pashtuns became Muslims (and how!) whose women just happened to light candles on Friday and who wore weird fringes.
2) Crimestop, a sort of protective stupidity. This is very nice because it requires no community or core set of beliefs. All you have to do is find anything beyond the latest LeBron James basketball story boring. "Why you tryin' to read that? You a fag or somethin'?" What are the odds that basketball will become Crimethink?
Hilariously, in today's America, the freest men are those who wear the Shield of Africa. See: Sheriff David Clark of Milwaukee County. "Those same men chanting "black lives matter" would have killed Freddie Grey for stepping on their shoes in the club!" Or Colonel Harry Tunnel, and his outstanding memo to the Secretary of the Army: tbo.com/list/military-news/colonel-mirrored-soldiers-concerns-in-afghanistan-533077
michaelyon-online.com/stunning-letter-infantry-colonel-communique-to-secretary-of-the-army.htm
Of course, being black in America largely means growing up around other blacks, who will do their best to beat any signs of non-criminal intelligence out of you, or seduce you into scumbaggery through peer pressure and charisma. But if by some chance you're one of the freaks who is born into an intact family headed by someone with a moral compass, or otherwise miss out on this crucial part of your education, you can have an unprecedented degree of freedom in your words. Within limits, of course-look what happened to COL Tunnell. Still, a white man who spoke with that level of insolence would have been railroaded out as a captain.
The only possibility for free speech for a whitey is if you work as some sort of semi-independent contractor/hired gun in a dirty and unpleasant profession.