I describe myself as so white, the only person whiter is an albino. I also say I'm so white that I have a vertical leap of two inches. On my one trip to Singapore, after a week I was ready for a taste of Americana. So I stroll on down to the local KFC, yes they are everywhere. Now in one week in Singapore I had not seen one person of what I would call African ancestry. I walk into KFC and there are Asian women staffing the counter and two black guys in the back cooking chicken. I started looking around for a hidden camera. I couldn't believe the situation was reality. It was sort of a Dave Chappelle moment before there was a Dave Chappelle.
AB, don't you get a twinge of pride or a skip in your step any time someone calls you "African-American?"
It used to be "long-haired" guy. My hair is shorter so I don't get that as much, but because it is longer than average and I have facial hair, I get a lot of "Hey, dude" or "Hey, man" from guys in suits trying desperately to be cool. It's kinda funny, particulary when I'm at a store about to buy something fairly expensive and a sales guy comes over and says, "Hey, what's up dude? Can I do something for you, man?" Yeah, you can get me a salesman who has enough respect not to refer to me as "dude" or "man." I don't need "sir" or "mister," but I'm guessing you wouldn't walk up to the clean cut guy in the suit and say, "Hey, bud, let me show you this sweet plasma TV!"
Because, seriously, I go straight to the obvious stuff with things like that, and don't look back. Hate to get all weenie'ish on everybody, but our differences should be celebrated, that's what's so friggin' sweet about this country, and unless I find out it makes someone uncomfortable, I'm going to go there first. The only problem I have is when people -- let's say, while I'm waiting for my girlfriend outside the bathroom at a Steely Dan concert -- come running up to me from ten feet away to go "hey, Eddie Money, how ya doin'?" And, you know, I can't punch the guy because I don't want to be kicked out of the concert, y'know? I hate Eddie Money.
Are you often the only black guy or one of a few black guys in the room? I lived in a 90% African American neighborhood last summer and believe me, "the black guy" wouldn't have been a very useful way to identify anybody in the neighborhood.
I have more than once been identified as "That guy who looks like Stiffler", because apparently I look a little like Seann William Scott. AB, side note: A lot of my family is from Little Rock and I spend a lot of time up there. I was evacuated there for a few weeks because of Rita. How rare of a situation do you have to be in to be considered "The Black Guy" in Little Rock? I don't know if I've ever spent time hanging around any people outside of my family where there weren't multiple black people. And the grocery store: Didn't you want to hit someone? Things move slower in that town than anywhere else this century. When I was evacuated up there, I would get extremely impatient of the cute little country girl carrying on a conversation to get the life history of the customer in front of me. And I was going nowhere in a hurry.
This is an interesting thread. I try not to use race as a descriptor, but I have to make a conscious effort about it. It's mostly because I don't ever say "over there, the white guy," so I feel like it'd be a double standard for me to to say it about black people, even if there's nothing else wrong with it. I think it confuses people a little bit, though. I live in a very lily area, so "the black guy" is an effective and oft-used way to zoom right in on whoever you're talking about. So a conversation could go like this: "The dude in the yellow, the one who's screaming quotes from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' at the top of his lungs." "You mean the black guy?" "Well, yeah."
my wife's family is from there. everything you just said AND the fact they tax food items like cereal and milk. wow.
This thread reminds me of a get together I had with some friends. We were sitting on the porch outside just talking and I found myself telling a couple of jokes about homosexuals. Later I realized that I had forgotten that one of the guys there is gay. He was present when I told the jokes and he just laughed. He could have gotten offended, but I think he knew I didn't mean anything hurtful by the jokes. I think we have to respect each others differences, but at the same time people tend to make small differences bigger than they really are.
I read somewhere that Arkansas has the worst return on tax dollars of any state. In other words, a larger percentage of taxes in Arkansas get tied up in bureaucracy than any other state. And they have an especially high tax burden for a Southern state. So when you gripe about poor public schools, health system, welfare in Texas, you can say that you get what you pay for. In Arkansas, that's not true.
Heh, this reminds me when i was balling with some friends, and we picked up some strangers to play with us. To clarify the teams, my friends said you're on the team with the black guy, and we joked why'd he had to be all racial. Then he said it's cause our Nigerian buddy was wearing black, and he would be the white guy cause he was wearing a white t-shirt. Don't women get mad if they get identified by their boobs? Even if they're awesome?
We were playing in the gym, our usual Noon-time games... just employees and faculty... and we wear jerseys which now are in green and black, and if there is a third team, they turn them inside out and they're WHITE... so... ... some dudes came and we told them to put on the black jerseys... even when they were Caucasian... we said to them: "Dude, you're BLACK"... they're all "MAN, ya'll don't have to get racial, man...! " Good times.
