Dear White Guy

Dear white guy,

I know you think it is funny when you make jokes about serious things. By serious I mean anything unhappy that doesn’t, in your view, affect you directly.

Things like rape, racism, foreign countries, urban poor, are best dealt with by saying something negative and pithy. Negative because if you say everything is stupid then you aren’t being racist. Because you hate all stupidity equally. There is a lot of stupidity out there, everywhere really, and you hate it all.

I get it. You are right, a lot of things are not as they should be and a lot of those things, we created. I understand you are a hard working guy who probably has kids that whine and the last thing you need is adults who do the same. You wish those grownups would heed the advice you give your own, “shut up and get back to work.”

I get it. I get it and please understand I mean this sincerely-

You are jack-ass.

I do not normally name call and that word is not one I ever say out loud, but I thought it the best word to most concisely and accurately communicate to you, in words that you appreciate, how you are acting.

First, let me say that condemning everything accomplishes nothing. No. That isn’t true. It accomplishes the annoyance of all who come within earshot of your wisdom. Even worse, and more troubling is that such an attitude makes you completely tone deaf to issues that are in fact important. To you.

Let me illustrate with a story.

When my oldest kid was four she whined a lot. Every night at bed time we had argument and tantrums. Every meal was a negotiation. Every morning getting dressed was a display of dramatic energy, noise, anger, and trouble. It was more than annoying and my wife and I did our best to not only resist giving into ridiculous demands but squash their genesis.

On one evening my child launched into a screaming fit because the world had conspired against her and the clock had actually struck 8:00. Bed time. What injustice! She kicked, screamed, complained, and I ignored it all. I sent her to bed. She got back up asking for water. I sent her to bed. She yelled down the stairs that she needed a night light. I responded, “go to bed.”

“I feel sick.”

“Go to bed.”

“I need medicine.”

“Go to bed.”

“I can’t breathe.”

“Go to bed.”

She was persistent and she was loud. She began really holding onto this I can’t breathe thing, but I ignored it as she was yelling I can’t breathe in between blood curdling screams. Around midnight, because my softy of a wife made me, I took little miss I can’t breathe to the emergency room. The nurse at the desk didn’t ask a single question, just looked at the child and rushed us to the back room.

We spent three days in the hospital trying to get my daughters newly diagnosed asthma under control. We now travel with an inhaler and have to use it regularly.

Sitting next to that little girl for three days was humbling. The kid spent hours telling me she couldn’t breathe and I not only ignored it but resented it. I was quite the jack-ass.

The whole time my daughter was yelling things I assumed she was making things up. I ignored her. I bet if she would have yelled, “Dad, your laptop is in my bed,” I would have rushed upstairs just to make sure it wasn’t. If she would have screamed, “Wow I found a 100 dollar bill,” I would have rushed upstairs to reclaim it. Because to me and my life money and laptops matter. Going to bed at 8 and one little glass of water are silly.

Racism isn’t silly. Neither is rape or poverty. Many of you can go a whole lifetime without visiting the proverbial ER on these things because you aren’t black, a woman, or poor. Maybe you have never seen someone raped, surely never done it, never said the N word, and you work hard for the little money you get, so of course those things aren’t as big a problem as those whiny four year olds say they are.

How arrogant and selfish is it to assume that you know best in other people’s lives? How, when others are explaining, or screaming, about their experience, do you come to the conclusion that you know the truth about them better than they do? Why when someone is speaking or explaining about hard truths, would you mock and belittle?

Stop it.

Listen.

Stopping and listening is harder than ignoring and mocking. Because ignoring and mocking is stupid. The stupid thing is always easiest.

Message to the NAACP, Jesse, Al, and anyone else who says they care

check out Brohammas guest blogging at
http://theapronstage.com/2009/05/08/more-captain-hook-than-peter-pan/


I learned a few things while broken down in traffic the other day.
When I say “broken down” I mean broken. One of the front wheels fell off the car. As if this wasn’t fun enough it was downtown right at the start of rush hour. I called a tow truck and then spent the next three hours standing in the road about 50 yards behind the immobile vehicle trying to direct traffic into the other lane. I may need to remind some people that I live in Philadelphia. This is the land of the car horn and I’m pretty sure the term “curses like a sailor” should be updated to “curses like a Philly motorist”. When I told the mechanic what I had done he looked at me in horror and said, “I woulda ran and hid around the corner telling folks, that aint my car.”
With that as a backdrop, here is what I learned:

Men like to diagnose problems.
When I got to the mechanic I brought with me 7 votes for a broken rocker arm, 5 votes for broken axle, and 9 votes for busted ball joint. It was the ball joint.

Women like to empathize. “Ohhhh honey,” was the most common phrase.

You cannot tell the race of a person by what they drive. I saw plenty of black people in trucks with big tires and white folks with shiny rims. There was no pattern, no trend.
Here is the big lesson…

Most people are very cooperative if they understand what is going on.

I had broken down right in front of an intersection, thankfully not in the intersection, on a two lane, one way city street. Traffic was backing up. I was standing in the middle of the lane trying to make eye contact with drivers and motioning them over into the open lane. I was clearly not a traffic cop, they don’t wear seersucker ties with tan pin striped pants (that’s another story). Occasionally I got the middle finger or an earful as people approached, followed by an apology as they saw the state of the vehicle ahead. A bunch of people offered to help me push the car up on the sidewalk, till they saw the wheel and then usually exclaimed “Holy ---- !” followed by condolences.
Most people, the vast majority of people, simply nodded, put on their blinker, and tried to get in the other lane. Usually, someone would let them.
Every now and then someone would be on a cell phone, or be impatient, and would nearly run me over as they sped right up behind the immobile vehicle. They would then be forced to try and go around, without enough room to clear the back bumper. Watching someone have to make a three point turn in the middle of rush hour traffic is painful. This would back the line of cars up even further and tempers would boil. In these situations I would walk around talking with motorists explaining what happened and they would shake their heads knowingly and wait.
But over and over again it was obvious; people were O.K. once they understood.

I wish the NAACP, Jesse, Al, or anyone else who claims to be invested in equality could have been there. Here is the lesson.

There are still race issues that should be addressed in this country. Racism still exists and discrimination still has affects. The biggest difference between today and 40 years ago is less people understand. There are no fire hoses and police dogs. No one is standing in the doors of the school house and few are kicked out of restaurants. The battle lines are hard to see. Many, if not most, white Americans don’t even know these battles still need fighting.

There is no one standing and directing traffic, explaining the situation, and people are getting mad. White people are sitting in a long line of traffic and have no idea that up ahead, the wheels have come off. We are all speeding ahead and will soon find ourselves staring at emergency flashers with no room to get in the other lane. Then what?

Today in the world of race relations there are those, individuals and institutions, who are trying to fight the fight. Lawyers, watch dog groups, campaigners, philanthropists, social workers, the list goes on. Some quietly go about business trying to do good, others scream loudly about injustice but rare is the one who explains what it’s all about.
The issues facing race and the affects of racism (both today’s and yesterday’s) have so much to do with people’s hearts and minds that it would make sense that these should be the targets. But they aren’t.

Sadly most are fighting today’s war with the weapons of days past. Looking for legislation, or filing a lawsuit. To the white person 20 cars back, it looks like black people are just tying up traffic. They don’t know why, they can’t see what’s going on, and all they know is they are trying to get somewhere. No one is walking back informing people that the lane ahead has a broken car in it.

Most of us have run around the corner saying “that aint my car.”