My Negro check

I really need to stay away from the comments section of the blogs and columns I read. OTOH, many comments show perceptiveness and a good heart, OTOH, many are filled with nasty resentment and childish, churlish attitudes. Naturally, what resonates with me are the ones that assume minorities get special treatment. Well, in a way that is true, minorities do get special treatment. Recently Charles Krauthammer railed against identity politics. I responded with a few of the things that indicated people identified my wife and me. How were we identified? I’ve offered many anecdotes around that issue and will assume that anyone reading this blog knows the record of racial discrimination and its current-day sequelae. The myths around Blacks and other minorities are held so tightly that Trump tapped into them directly, dispensing with the dog-whistles Republicans have used for decades to win over disaffected Whites. I often say that having been married to a Black woman for 52 years, I am still waiting for my Negro check from the gum’mint I thought I was supposed to get.

The suspicion that minorities get special treatment in a positive way fueled much of the resentment Trump battened on. The airbnbs have come under suspicion of racial discrimination. This past weekend my wife and son rented one and my wife noticed how the owner mouthed something sotto voce like “don’t f— my place up”. So my wife confronted him, asking him why he thought he had to say that. She got the usual stuff how best friends and dating Black women and being raised around Blacks and all the outs people use to avoid confronting their own prejudice. Eventually, she wore him down and he seemed to have got the message that what he did was wrong and was hurtful. What should have been a nice couple of days started off badly simply b/c a White man could not divest himself of his prejudices.
Dumb excuses might be another category for my blog: Black people don’t work in a particular place or live there or go to school there b/c “they don’t want to”. Black people don’t show up on magazine covers b/c they don’t want to. If these people were honest, they would come out and say Black women are ugly, Black people are dumb, Black people are lazy, b/c this is what they really believe. With so many cameras, cell phones, reporters out there now, we are catching more and more undeniable instances of discrimination. And as long as people are discriminated against, the Democratic Party will champion them.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *