I’m not talking about privilege. I’m talking about a somewhat creepy sense of entitlement, something I neither ask for, cultivate or reject out of a sense of decency. I just deal with it, like everything else. Let me illustrate.
This past weekend the Spousal Unit and I accompanied my best friend and his better half up to Reno NV for some rest, relaxation and house hunting. If you haven’t been there recently, Reno is not what you think it is. It’s basically a kind of undiscovered Austin for people you expect to find in Vail. In other words, it’s a retirement destination for folks who expect to ski, but for whom million dollar townhouses are just out of reach.
So remember as a data engineer, I’m the guy who spent most of his career as an independent contractor doing six week gigs all across the country doing 1099 work, Lone Ranger style. I walk in the door of the Corp HQ and the receptionist blinks. And the hiring manager blinks. Then we get on with it and they wish they could clone me, but I’ve already solved a year’s worth of their problems. Who was that masked man? Every once in a while, I end up in some locale where the blink becomes a double take, a triple take, a weird invitation to dinner or something inexplicably memorable. It has happened enough times so I that I can feel it approaching. Then I get this weird feeling that I don’t quite understand and can’t manage to dismiss.
The last time this happened, I was up in a strange little town called Kernville CA, population 1395. I had dropped my boy off where he was a Boy Scout counselor for a gang of kids about 20 miles up the dirt road, and I decided it was about time for lunch and a beer. The first weird feeling came from the beer joint where I just sat by my lonesome and listened for and imagined bar fights. Oddly enough, I look at floors of such places, and this one was wood planks, but they were straight, unlike the swervy warped ones of a smelly joint in Manchester UK. The Manchester bar was pathetically sad. The Kernville bar just sat quietly in anticipation of the motorcycle gang that never showed up. The waitress gave me a kind of look, like OK you’re not a tourist but you’re too nice to be in here, so here’s your beer, drink up.
That one was about a 6 /10 on the creepy scale, so I went and had breakfast at the ‘everybody comes here to eat’ kind of cafe on the street where tourists buy antique door knockers, stuffed squirrels and wicker cat boxes. This time the joint is packed and the voluble chunky proprietress takes one look at me and bade me sit at the bar, because I’m clearly by myself. She makes a big deal out of talking up the [black male] FedEx guy who appears a moment after me. “Oh hi Sidney! Sidney’s one of my best friends. He comes in every day, same time. What have you got for me Sidney?” I don’t know if she’s actually talking to Sidney or everybody else seated and eating her famous peach compote waffles. I wish I had a Wall Street Journal to be reading, but the coffee is good. I’ve probably been to Kernville three times now, but I take my meals in Bakersfield.
Idaho, Utah & Washington
I’ve encountered similar vibes in Boise ID and in Salt Lake City, but SLC is by far the more sophisticated yet downright plain place. I can’t quite place it, because I know they have some data nerds out that way, and I like data nerds. They also have true Western Americans and I like them too, slightly more than I like Midwestern Americans, truth be told. But yeah they’re used to the black guy jokes that are generally part of the routines at Dry Bar in Provo. Still, I think I have a bit in common with Mormons who escape and those who somewhat conform without the slightest bit of evangelical zeal. Still, I had the best ever corn chowder in my life at a restaurant called Bambara. My Yelp review is here. I got the distinct feeling that I was treated like a famous restaurant critic. I’m a fairly sophisticated diner with old school table manners that were drilled into me and a wife who is in the restaurant business. So there’s that, but it was quite above and beyond. I was in Bambara last February and it’s not quite all that any longer, but I did have a black waiter this time.
The strangest encounter I ever had of this sort happened to me on the Olympic Peninsula out in Washington State. I was doing my Lone Ranger thing for WADOT in Olympia, and decided to take the long weekend and camp out in the wilderness near Hoodsport. The next day back I decided to stop in a little town that is directly adjacent to the Skokomish Amerindian territory. The town was Shelton. At any rate, I dress up a bit because I want a sit down meal. It’s early evening and I find myself at the two screen movie theater. Everybody is staring me down like I’m Denzel Washington. I’ve been in situations where I was well positioned to work the room, but it felt like I had to work the entire town. It was one of those crystallizing moments where you don’t quite remember what happened immediately before and after. Just the looks of wonder and admiration on the broad young faces in the crowd.
It must have been teen’s night out, the crowd was thick at dusk and I moved through a strange slow motion fog like I was Sticks from Happy Days or The Brother from Another Planet. I can’t even think of a film or TV reference that nails it, nor any passage in literature. It was disconcerting, but not hostile. It was not cloying but it was personal; it was a vibe I could feel and I couldn’t be anonymous in any way. I don’t remember how I got through it, or what I ate that evening, but the memory remains. The picture of the theatre brought it all back, but too concretely. I wanted to look at the street and details my mind could not recall. I just know that somehow, just being there made me some kind of hero - like the man they always believed existed but never saw before in the flesh.
Georgia
I suppose I should add a couple of encounter that I’ve used for other purposes in my conversations about race. These occurred in 1995 when I first moved to Georgia. The first was that I discovered that I had in-laws in the town of Stone Mountain. I vaguely had some notion that the world’s largest Confederate monument loomed over this town and also that the KKK would throw their bacchanals there once a year at the very top of the mountain complete with burning crosses that could be seen for miles. So I was floored when we got to the suburb and it was the most picturesque place I could imagine. A completely black middle class neighborhood with lush trees that overhung the quiet streets. Black kids riding their bikes in the streets and whooshing up sycamore leaves as they idled by. And still I could look up and see the mountain which suddenly just became part of the background of peace, quiet and domestic bliss. I wanted to raise my kids there.
A few years earlier I was living in Boston and was actually completely bored by the idea of going down to Southy, the notorious white neighborhood where no coloreds were allowed. But even five or six years earlier than that, while I was still in college, I attended a conference in Boston and walked over to a town called Somerville. At night. Alone. I had no idea about its reputation, but telling the story brought gasps of astonishment. When I actually lived in Boston, I regularly went to the Somerville movie theatre. Funny, it aways reminds me of Cypress Hill’s Jump Around. Anyway, back to Georgia.
This time around, given that I was already getting such warm welcomes in Atlanta, I decided to press my luck and head northeast to Forsyth County. Race folks know that this was the site of the book Black Like Me that was published the year I was born. So honey, I said, let’s go house hunting. Long story short we ended up in relatively new subdivisions around Cumming GA and couldn’t have felt a warmer reception by the [white] real estate agent showing us new and yet unbuilt homes. That was basically my experience for the three years we had our babies in Georgia. I lived in Cobb County, the home district of the infamous Newt Gingrich. In fact, the only racial static I ever got was from one or two Fulton County blackfolks who told me I was too uppity because my kids were born at Northside Hospital instead of Grady.
My Prerogative
Of course the South is complex, I couldn’t go into all of that here. Still, my point stands. It’s quite easy for me to cite any number of reasons and examples why race needn’t dominate society’s treatment of me, and a few examples in which it seemed to me to be the predominating reason why I was treated unsuspectedly well. Considering the descending expectations of racial amity these days, I will no doubt be accused of having ‘white privilege’. Consider the following amazingly racial chart.
This has the imprimatur of the National African American Museum in DC. I find it ridiculous beyond belief. Then again, it illustrates how racialized culture has become in weaker minds. I find this a direct consequence of American multiculturalism which now competes with the aims of a racially integrated pluralism which were the aims and purpose of the Civil Rights movement in this country which has benefited all Americans and inspired millions worldwide.
To transgress against the racializing of traits and virtues illustrated above is the natural consequence of me just being me. I don’t see how one can grow up in the West and not understand this description of culture. Culture is the nurture half of human existence. As social animals we will learn or perish. Those who decide to be counter-cultural and adopt an oppositional stance to this ‘whiteness’ are victims to the subversive agenda of the Wokies. It is ever ironic that the icons of black history are those who gained power and standing in America by expressing and personifying many of these traits and virtues.
Let the counter-culturalists have their communes. They’ll learn the hard way. Or as I said in another context:
Q: What would happen if white America decided they had enough of African American complaining?
A: Exactly what’s happening now. They’d overestimate the size and power of ‘white’ America and stew in their own idiot juices. Then they’d realize how hopeless it is to try and redefine America and bitch their way into ‘racially pure’ isolation, obscurity and self-pity.