Against Stupidity, Contending In Vain

I DIDN'T EXPECT to be compensated for voluntarily sweeping and mopping the floor at the senior center, but, in a strange sort of way, I was. It was amusing and entertaining, in a sordid sort of way. So amusing was the conversation emanating from the card table (crazy eight?) that I lingered nearby, and shined the surrounding floor to a gleaming, shining sheen. Said one countrified blue collar rural conservative to another; "I watch reruns of 'The Jeffersons'. Its a hilarious show. All the characters are black, and its amazing how racist it is." That got my attention. To which a small-southern-town American conservative responded: "when TV first started, everyone on it was white. Then all the blacks started complaining about it, so they had to put black people on television. Now they're all over the place, and you hardly ever see any white people." NO, I'm not making this up. I really heard this. So, I kept mopping and listening. I'm pushing broom, barely able to believe what I'm hearing, even though I probably shouldn't have been surprised. One of them ruined the conversation by changing the subject, and I felt deprived. I looked around in desperation, seeking some oasis in the midst of this vast cultural wasteland, knowing that this was actually a sort of self inflicted torture. After all, I could always move to a city, any city, or to a nice, progressive college town, where intellect is valued. I forced myself to accept the unavoidable fact that my sweeping and mopping were not taking place on Harvard Square, nor in the Cal Berkeley library, or somewhere, anywhere, where it is understood that black folks were enslaved in America for two hundred and forty six years, and were then "freed", into another form of slavery, the outcast exclusionary status of legally mandated segregation and humiliation, for another hundred years. Every Sociology Department in every University in America informs us, through rigorous scientific study, that racism in America has not abated, but merely changed shape, and that it has always been and remains a bedrock American institution, as ever. And the racism is a one way street, originating squarely among the white population, aimed directly at the black culture. In short, we whites started it, and it is up to us to end it. The Jeffersons endure it the way their ancestors did and their colleagues do; by inventing the only culture unique to America, the blues culture, by gathering together in segregated communities and staying together, and, on television, by ridiculing it, thus pointing it out to a white culture that would rather forget about it, and carry on, business as usual. That the blacks refuse to simply ignore it renders them, in the eyes of the conservative cracker community, "racist". My grandmother was born in 1892, and, bless her sweet soul, I remember her well. A proud woman of German ancestry, she used the term "niggra", and thought herself to be sociologically generous. Had any dark pigmented little old lady dared attempt to join her church quilting circle, she would have run from it, and formed another one, I can assure you. My Uncle Bob, now 93, once sold his house when an African,-American family moved in across the street. Yes, that really happened. But of course, he denied that the real estate deal had anything whatever to do with racism. That's the difference in America's "new racism"; now, at least, we are ashamed of it, so we try to hide it, and pretend it isn't there. It runs in my honkie family too. At least dear uncle was good enough to refrain from referring to Obama by the "N" word in my presence - he saves that for his peer group - and for that, I am immensely grateful.