Some Notes On Race And Class

Last week. I jotted a few notes bout race and social/economic class in the United States. Please consider them just notes that I might expand for a later essay.

White rednecks and black original gangsters have some things in similiar. An exaggerated sense of honor and respect due to them, a quickness to anger and attendant violence with it are two things.

But there is one big thing that separate these two groups: Most of the times, blacks dress better than whites.

There is a hierarchy of dress among three social/economic groups.

The one which dresses better is black, whether white collar or blue-collar, whether middle class and working class.

After them are white-collar, middle-class whites.

At the bottom is working-class, blue-collar whites.

As for the blue-collar whites, their way of dress might be a way to say, I'm not a middle-management tool like you, dependent on the approval of those above you for work and respect. I'm free to dress how I want.

Active Hormones, Just Like Mine

In the early 1980s, I lived in a small city in east central Indiana. It was known mostly for its manufacturing, which was going to hell then, and its high school basketball program.

One Friday night, I was working the late shift. As I was going home, I saw, about two blocks ahead of me, a group of young black men. They were more like kids; I doubt any of them were older than 15 years.

At first, I felt scared. I grew up in a small town that had no black residents, so my contact with them was limited. I had no idea what their intentions were.

But then I realized that they were teens, just as restless as I was when I was their age. My friends and I roamed the streets in packs, rode our bicycles because none of us had driver's licenses, and acted like idiots at times, especially when we were together, because we were changing from boys to men.

I didn't feel ashamed, just satisfied because I had a reason why they were in a group.

Race Trumps Sex

When S. heard his friend A. say he probably wouldn't fuck a black woman because of her race, S. was surprised.

He's fuck some black women if they were sexy enough and fit his standards of lust. Race wasn't a factor at all. But A.'s statement proved mind over cock. Most of the time, the cock wins because it's not an inhibited.

Looks like racism has another victim, S. thought of A. And this one's white. He's closed himself off to experiences if they are predominately black. Too bad.

As the years passed, S. became less of a friend to A. and more of a semifriendly acquaintance. He didn't entirely cut A. out of his life, but he put a lot more distance between them then he had in the past.

A lot of people say: Don't burn you bridges, S. thought. I'm not gonna do that with A. but I'm gonna let it rot from neglect.

Then he realized bridges didn't rot because they weren't organic. The word decline wasn't strong or powerful enough, so he checked the dictionary and found the word he wanted to use was deteriorate: The best example of a process of a thing that wasn't living and never was alive.

Different Outlooks

A lot of the tensions between black and whites come from honest mistakes that are made because the races come from different cultures and have different ways of looking at life.

Much of the time, whites make the mistakes.

For example, a black guy and a white guy were working in the same office. One Thursday evening, the white guys sais, "Oh John ... "

The black guy said, "Yes, Chad?"

"Brad, Thad, Jason and I are going skydiving this weekend. Would like to come along with us?"

"Now, Chad, do you remember that you asked me the same thing last fall?"

"Yes, I did."

"Do you remember what I tgold you then?"

"Not offhand."

"I'll rlemind you: WHAT PART OF 'HELL NO' DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?"

"Wnhy, I understood all of it, John.:

"Good. My answer's stil the same."

Other examples include:

• Square dancing;
• Elvis still lives;
• Nuzzling a dog.
  

Equal Opportunities

In April of this year, I was in line at a book store on the northeast side of Indianapolis. I was behind a young black woman who was carrying a musical instrument in a pack on her back.

I asked her, "Is that a cello?"

She answered, "No. It's an acoustic guitar," with a snotty sound in her voice.

I thought: The only black woman who's licensed to carry an acoustic guitar and allowed to sing folks music is Tracy Chapman.

Then I thought: Hey, with the advancement in civil rights, black people how have the chance to sing boring, offkey, mediocre and unoriginal songs at open mics -- just like any white person.

America -- ain't it grand?

ripping off blacks

a big part of american history includes white people ripping off black people. two examples are profits from cotton farming in the south, along with rock and roll.

i feel about half guilty about it. my ancestors didn't own a plantation, so they never exploited any slaves or indentured servants, more or less.

but i do like rock and roll.

so i listen more often to classical music, and i'm beginning to like it more and more. whatever you might say against it -- oldgeezer music, irrelevant, boring, etc. -- no one can say it rips off blacks in any way.

how a situation is bigoted

once i was watching a commercial about an airline. in it, a black guy wore so much clothing before he left on a trip that he looked like the michelin man. he did that so he wouldn't pay any charges for luggage. if he had flown on the airline in the commercial, he wouldn't have been charged for luggage.

i laughed at the situation, but quickly wondered: is this commercial bigoted?

i decided it wasn't. here's how i determined that. you could've put a white guy, an asian or a hispanic in the same situation and it still would've been funny.

so if any minority is in a silly/foolish/stupid/ridiculous situation, and you substitute a different person in it, you're laughing at a human foible. that's appropriate.

but if you don't get those laughs with the substitution -- then it's bigoted.

hey -- blacks don't do that!

growing up in an allwhite town can truly skew your outlook on race.

for example, take ferguson jenkins, who used to pitch for the chicago cubs.

when i was a teenger in the late 1960s, i read an article about him in a magazine about sports. nothing was out of the ordinary until --

i saw a picture of him wearing a hockey uniform.

i was taken aback -- almost shocked. blacks don't play hockey, i thought. they play football and basketball and baseball -- but not hockey.

i found out later that jenkins was born and raised in ontario, canada.

when i was a gradeschool boy, i thought that blacks lived only in segregated sections of cities. one of them lived outside those sections because he was a millionaire.

he was sammy davis, jr.