Race in 2020 - RIP George Floyd

The country is on fire right now and...

We need to be part of something that happens, something that changes... there's something sick out there. There's something broken. There's something WRONG.

It's... I'm trying to figure out how to say it while I'm writing it instead of planning this out like I usually do. I'm sorry. (Also: Warning... will contain adult language and a link to a video that is definitely difficult to watch)

I grew up in the South. For my first few years of school, I was a minority, little toe-headed white boy. My best friend was Irna. She was black (I imagine she still is actually... it's not something that goes away). We moved to Germany and I went to High School on an army base there. The army is more racially diverse than a lot of America is, and less important than your color is your rank. Yeah, I know, it's elitist. But, hey, the Officer's Club had better video games. My best friend through high school was biracial, in Germany that definitely counted as black. It was pretty white over there then. I haven't been back for a while so I don't know what it's like now. Back in the thirties and forties they sort of got rid of the ones who didn't fit their interior decorating palette...

I went back to Alabama to go to college and Mom remembers me saying early in going back an observation about the cafeteria at the university. I was disappointed to note that there were clusters of colors. There wasn't a lot of mixing going on. That was in 1986. Everybody was self-segregating into black and white tables.

I got to be Supervisor down in Memphis years later, and I had no white employees for years. None, every employee I had was black. For about four hours I had a white lady working for me, but she went to lunch and never came back.

Something I've learned in all that time is that there are two worlds out there. There are two Americas. There's the one I live in where I and another white male middle-aged friend of mine can trespass, park a truck on someone's business property at night and watch fireworks and not get the cops called on us... and then there's the one where I could be on the news being killed because of what I look like.

That's not political. It's not hippie leftist thinking. It's a fact. And it's hard to watch. It's hard to see over and over again. And it doesn't have to be that way. It's a choice. It's a choice for those people who are doing the killing.

I see people saying, "BLUE LIVES MATTER!" during the conversation and I close my eyes and I close my mouth because there are no blue lives. Blue is a job. If you take off your blue shirt and go to the mall you're not blue anymore. You can live your life without being blue if you want to. You can't take off black. It's there. And it is such a different experience from being white.

Yes. It's better than it was. But that doesn't mean it's good. Better doesn't mean right. If you haven't eaten in 20 days and someone gives you a teaspoon of oatmeal a day, that's better... but it's not good. It's not enough.

Just because things are better doesn't mean it's good enough.

I KNOW you would never do something like this. If you would, you wouldn't be reading my blog. But there's more to it than that. I'm not telling myself "Well, I'd never do that so let's talk about the riots."

Fuck the riots. I could give two shits about the riots in this conversation. That's exactly what keeps happening. The trigger gets drowned out by the noise of what follows and we don't address the trigger. We address the noise.

What else can I do? What else can WE do, to help things continue to get better? Just waiting for the old racists who were raised to think "negro" was the good word so let's all just use that one and they can't complain to die isn't working. Our health care is getting too good. They're living too long. We can't wait for all the racists to die for things to get better. Because they're like gay people. Nobody knows why they keep happening but dammit! Every time I turn around there's another homo or racist sitting on the corner with some cause or another. What the hell man? Gimme a break. I just want to go to work, go to a restaurant once in a while, and go home and watch Survivor with my gay husband. Is that too much to ask? (He's the gay one, not me! Straight as hell! LoL)

The thing is, that's all the people who keep getting killed want. Maybe they want Skittles. Maybe they want help when their car breaks down. Maybe they want to go for a walk. Maybe they want to go for a jog. What they don't want is to live in fear of the police. They don't want to teach their kids to be afraid of the police. They don't want to be afraid they're going to be shot if they have a tail light out that they haven't fixed yet.

They don't want to lay on the ground while a police dog chews on them, LITERALLY CHEWS on them so afraid if they move at all WHILE THE DOG CHEWS THEM that they'll be shot. What world is it that we, you and I, have allowed to exist that they overcome literally every instinct to NOT BE EATEN because their fear of the police is worse than their fear of the dog that is literally chewing on them right then? How have you allowed that to happen? How have I? How have we? Because that's the reality for a black person in today's America.

So, what can we do to fix it? Literally, anybody who isn't trying to help in this situation, anybody who says, "Well, they just need to learn patience. Change takes time..." they're part of the problem.

If two poufs can get married when that was UNIMAGINABLE 30 years ago, then a black man should be able to interact with a law enforcement officer without being afraid he's going to die.

That's all I want. I want our police officers to be the good guys for ALL of us. Not just for my Aryan ass. ALL of us. Including my friends who have more melanin and less skin cancer than me and my family.

If you disagree with anything I've said, please unfollow me. I'm really distressed by all of this, more than I should be for as often as it happens. I should be numb to it by now but I'm not getting desensitized to it for some reason. I guess it's because I think it's important. I think it matters and I can't stop thinking about it.

Writing in color & S.A. Hunt

I've been rolling this post around in my head for days because I'm not sure how to say it properly. I've decided to just say it because I think it needs saying.

I'm reading Malus Domestica by S.A. Hunt and really enjoying it. According to my kindle I'm exactly halfway through it. It's a horror novel, it says so right on the cover. It's reminiscent of early Stephen King to me... along the lines of say, Pet Semetary. It's not the same kind of scary, yet. But it's building nicely. I'm really enjoying it.

While I'd always assumed that Malus Domestica meant something along the lines of Ordinary Evil or Evil in the Home or something like that I was quite wrong... humorously wrong in fact. In fact it means Orchard Apple. I'm not even kidding. The Mal in Malus isn't bad at all! Apples are about as pure and wholesome as... well... as apple pie! What could be wrong with an apple? Nothing! (Please don't ask Snow White how she feels about apples. Her opinion is biased by the lone interaction with a witch and an apple. How often could that POSSIBLY come up?)

I'm not here to talk about apples though. I'm here to talk about reading. I've been reading for years, over 40 years and I read several different ways. I read for entertainment. I read to learn new things. I read as a writer to see what I like and don't like in a story. That's part of what I'm going to talk about here. First some background about me.

See that? That's me according to my DNA. What do those places have in common? White. I'm incredibly white. If I'm not careful on a sunny day you can see straight through my skin to the muscles underneath.

Why does this matter? Because I read a lot of books. I read a lot of science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, and adventure fiction, a LOT. Those books are primarily written by white guys for white guys and tend to be populated, oddly enough, by more white guys. Even fantasy settings. Elves? Check. Dwarves? Check. Owl headed monsters leaping from closets? Well, sometimes. White people? Oh hell yeah! They're like EVERYWHERE! Just relax gentle reader. As foreign as these fantasy and science fiction worlds may be you may rest assured you will always feel at home as a 99% white guy because everywhere you look will be tons of other people JUST LIKE YOU!

As a white reader I don't even notice. Honestly. I don't. I don't pay any attention. The default for me is "white guy protagonist." I'm not saying it to be proud of it or anything I'm just saying that's my reading world and I am mostly not even aware of it. It just happens.

So, when I pick up a book and it has a person of color in it I notice. I don't object or recoil and throw the book down but I notice. That's a recent thing and it's because I've started writing. Want to read my book? Cool. Go get it and read it. I'll wait here. But about people of color in books. Sometimes they're there to die as in the "black guy dies first" trope. Sometimes they're the "magic negro." Sometimes they're sort of a side character we don't really get to know but the author wanted to be inclusive and diverse so (s)he made sure to have a non-white person in there. A lot of times diversity for the sake of diversity, in books, doesn't work. Either the writer doesn't know what they're doing, or they're trying too hard, or sometimes it's just a weird sort of "I don't know anybody who is from India so I'll make them like Raj from Big Bang Theory" kind of thing going on. It's jarring.

Which is what made me nervous when I saw that S.A. Hunt had included multiple races and was using not just a token person from each race he wanted to include, but actually had a black father & son as main characters. There's a "Juan" whose country of origin I don't know so won't guess, but i'm pretty sure I know. There's women all over the place, well written ones too. That's another thing, sometimes men write women badly.

I'm happy to say S. A. Hunt writes both really well. I was afraid he was going to botch it or get preachy with things or go too far but he didn't. He's hit exactly the right tone. Now, I'm saying this as white guy. You've seen my DNA so you know. But my point is. Here, here's an example. The point of view character here is a young black boy. Something S.A. Hunt is not, according to his author profile on amazon at least. But he handles the casual day-to-day racism that I KNOW really exists because I see it. And he doesn't go into what's going on in the boy's head as a result. He doesn't try to guess is he hurt, resentful, angry, what? He puts it there and moves on. Because that's what life is like on the daily for people of color.

Racism is bad. We can all agree on that. And when someone says "racist" or "racism" I think lynch mobs. I think throwing people out of a diner or off a bus. But that's not all there is to it. There's this here. There's the ignoring them unless forced not to. That's a big deal. It's a daily, constant, "You don't matter" that they deal with and it never goes away. How would that feel to be treated like that day after day after day? What would that do? Here's a thought experiment. Ignore your kid for say, a week. Like unless they demand your attention don't pay them any at all... you're already thinking, "WTF is wrong with you Rich?" Exactly. That's exactly my point and it's exactly what happens and it's insidious.

In another place in the book there's a group of white people discussing the new neighbors and one of them casually drops the N-word. Nobody blinks they just go on as if he'd said "cabbages are green." Why? Because it was just them. Nobody was hurt by it... It happens all the time. It's casual. It's made okay because nobody else heard it. It's there. I see both of these things constantly in real life.

S.A. Hunt has written a really enjoyable book that is a supernatural horror thriller that has characters in it I really enjoy and like. I didn't mention the handicapped man who doesn't define himself by his handicap... mainly because I strongly suspect he'd take his leg off and beat me with it then put it back on and walk off. I didn't mention him because it's not WHO he is. He's not a HANDICAPPED man. The other characters aren't a BLACK family. They are not defined by their adjective as so many authors do. There's a man who has a prosthetic leg. There's a family that is also black.

So, what I'm saying is if you're writing, include some "other" in there. Something besides white men or white folks. And if you're wondering how? Do it like S.A. Hunt does because he does it really well, and does the interactions between them really well. I can't say enough good things about it.

Without being a screed or preachy manifesto it's made me think and that's what good fiction does. This is really good fiction.

Dammit!

You ever watch The New Adventures of Old Christine? I love it. She is funny to me. Julie Louis Dreyfuss or whatever... I love her in that role. I remind me of her sometimes.

So, I'm paranoid of being perceived as racist. I'm a blond, middle-aged, white guy. If anybody fits the stereo-type of a racist or The Man... it's me. I failed to mention I'm in amazing shape, stunningly good looking, and have trophy wives on each arm... the reason I failed to mention is it that none of that is true. Middle aged white guy with blond hair, that's true. Paranoid about being perceived as racist, also true.

I ALWAYS lock my car. I've talked about this before... but I can't find where. Maybe it was on facebook.

I pull up to a friend's house and across the street a non-white couple with 2 kids lives. We've chatted in passing and we know each other well enough to wave and say "Hey." That's about it. The day in question there were about a dozen non-white kids in the yard and their parents on the sidewalk as I pulled up. I got out and looked at them and waved to the two people I knew and they waved back... then I was about to put the key in the door and lock it, AS I ALWAYS DO (so I won't lock my keys in the car)... when I froze... oh crap. They're going to think I'm locking the door because of all those non-blondes over there! So. I didn't lock the car. I was only going to be gone like 3 minutes. It wound up being more like five.  While I was gone half the kids and all the adults left.

I was half way down the block before I realized my ipod, previously in the passenger seat, was gone. SONOFA#*&^@!!!! See! This is what I get for being sensitive to what other ppl think! I get screwed! Now, it's not because of the race of the kids that the ipod is gone. It's because there were a half dozen of them, unattended, and I'd left them a crime of opportunity. Dammit! If I'd locked the door I'd still have my ipod. Now I have a steaming pile of nothing.

So, from now on... locking the door. If they get their feelings hurt they can pitch a fit. But I had my ipod stolen dangit! Those things aren't cheap. I'm still pissed about it.