Yes, what the world needs is another privileged white guy trying to teach us about racism

Sorry.

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I guess racism hides out in the back row; he is a little quieter and better mannered now; some say that in the dim moral lights of this world, that is a stage they - or, let's not be cruel, perhaps they are proudly binary, a racist is still skulking. 

I have a black friend "Steve" (okay, I am giving him the whitest fake name I can; he will be pissed), who is a paramedic; he is one of the most intelligent people I know, even though he disagrees with me on most of my political positions. But he always tells me straight; he has no problem drinking my booze and starting conversations with the words, "Really, really, how do you know that? Could you show me the evidence .? "Such a bastard.   And he keeps playing Soca music at my house. For every moment of Soca, I threaten him with Queen.

But using an ambulance metaphor, he frames the issue of racism nicely, "imagine that you were bleeding out on the street and the ambulance showed up 30 minutes late and as you lay dying in the back, the perky paramedic said, you should be grateful, 80 years ago you wouldn't have had the quality of painkillers I'm giving you." And then the paramedic congratulates themselves. And you bleed out.

Yes, the old being grateful for how far you've come doesn't do much when you're hurting or dying.  The government should ban all “You should be happy because that person over there is doing worse” encouragement pills; they don’t work.

Then, only one person in the world has the right to be miserable.

But come on. At least we think that old-school vulgar racism, where they are calling black folk the n-word, has completely gone away. I'm afraid it's not true. Steve has heard it three times. People get loose-lipped when they are drunk, high and injured. And you know what Steve does when they call him the N-word? He takes care of them and occasionally saves their lives. You're welcome. 

I have another black friend, "Janet" (another super white name she'd hate), who I have shopped a half dozen times with, twice at Costco and the rest at the liquor store. Let me be clear: I'm a white, entitled, privileged conservative who argues with her about how Malcolm X went too far.  I need to learn to shut up. 

One of my problems is a general need for more attention to grooming and public attention to style and coordination. My Russian friend frequently uses the phrase "homeless chic" to describe me. That title offends some, but Russians are blunt.

While shopping with Janet, I saw her get mildly harassed by shopkeepers. Even I, the least woke person on the planet, noticed it. Once, Janet was dressed in her upscale officewear, and I was wearing a ratty teeshirt and grey sweats that should only be used for making homemade dog food. As we left Costco, they were doing the receipt-checking ritual.

Janet got a thirty-second examination of her jumbo popcorn bags and corresponding receipts; when I got a happy face on my receipt, I pushed through, waiting in the lobby next to the tyre centre.  

Similarly, I had the same clothing motif when we were together at the liquor store. I got, "Can I help you?" while she got followed around the store and suspicious glances.  

The funniest thing is that Janet has worked for me, and I mock her for refusing to round up her hours and getting e-transfers that always end in 12 cents. She's so honest it's annoying. 

But I wish that Janet and Steve had not urged me to do a double shot of Grenadian Rivers all those years ago. I almost went into a coma. They tried to revive me by playing Byran Adams and Tragically Hip, but it didn’t work; in the end, while they partied, I went outside to puke in the parking lot. My dignity levels dropped a bit that day.

I realize that expectations of treatment can affect interpretation; I am resistant to any workforce diversity training as they always seem to be delivered by middle-aged white saviours who probably have never spoken with an Indigenous or black person for more than 30 seconds, just the time they got their driver's licence renewed.  

I used to write business plans for Indigenous start-ups in Fort Mac and went to a few powwows, but I admit I have no clue what it's like to be Indigenous in Canada.  

The best thing I do is make jokes that will probably get me fired one day. A recent black student who just got admitted to a top Business School in Canada and an Indigenous kid who did the best social media project at my university class ended up ranked one and two in a class of 55. 

I spoke to one of them and said, "We have a black and Indigenous student coming first and second. I must check with the administration to see if we need to change this. It might not be allowed.  

This same black student (her fake name will be Tara; it sounds like a girl who shops at Hot Topic) pulled me out of class one day and informed me that while I had gone for coffee, a student had gone up to the lectern computer, broken into my question library, filmed my questions, and then air-dropped them to the class. Isn’t technology fantastic?

But Tara was a Christian girl and wouldn’t put up with it. I rewrote every question and ended up with a 65% average.

When I was with Janet at Costco, she constantly told me to shut up when I jokingly muttered in long lines, "Excuse me, I'm white; am I allowed to go to the front?"  

Calm down. Of course, I'm kidding, but if she chose to take my jokes out of context, this girl could create an HR file on me that could confuse a manager. You know, the old problem about too much choice leading to decision paralysis: They'd have too many reasons to fire me. 

My business student, the one who got into the top MBA program in the nation and demanded a GMAT, let me in years ago because they thought my English Master's in Fiction Writing was a funny segue into a business degree, and has accepted her. She is the first graduate from where I teach, and I know she was accepted. 

I wish her the best; she carries old wounds of negative academic expectations from a childhood in Rexdale. Seeing her makes me wonder why they let me in all those years ago; perhaps I was set up to be one of those fall guys on Dragons Den who get used as a means of providing comic relief, or maybe they hated their Accounting and Economics professors. They wanted to see what would happen if they put me in the front row and asked me to explain debits and credit.  But it went okay; I sat in the fourth row and mostly slept. 

I got the MBA and still need to understand debits and credits. My microeconomics final was mislabeled, with many arrows and curves moving everywhere. I hoped that if I put enough incomprehensible economics graphs and clutter on an exam and caught him tired, he'd say the hell with it and give me a C-. Mission accomplished.  

But while racism exists today, it is always a condition of the human heart, and biblically, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Such is the norm today that we are just a lot better at stemming that overflow. 

This is, of course, better than nothing. Still, if racial predilections have gone underground, I think this last mile toward MLK's colourblind society will be challenging, especially when Malcolm X's exasperated segregation is more popular.  

I'm not qualified to be a diversity consultant; I honestly believe white people should try to avoid such roles, as they can be painfully annoying. All I know is that understanding the antecedents of racism and current issues like white fragility (to me, that's just when we white folks think that if we aren't mentally using the N-word constantly, we are free and clear, and we crumble when anyone suggests otherwise), white privilege (it's not a club to which we cognitively carry a card; it's just a kind of apparent historical observation of our society. Privilege is the confidence with which we move forward in life; we may have BLM stickers all over our cars and laptops, but we are still subconsciously milking privilege).

Racism takes time and needs to be explained. 

I thank God that I've had black friends who never attacked me, who approached me with good faith, who never put me in a corner and who were patient enough to explain their perspectives on racism. But I wonder if many of us never had a 10-minute conversation with an Indigenous person and if we think that watching The Color Purple all those years ago covers us.  

The DEI consultants who go in full guns blazing, testing the limits of their listener's fight or flight mechanisms, will never do any good. However, if they do no good, just fishing for defensiveness, they certainly keep the business case for hiring more diversity consultants strong. You must accept that many of these agitators in many social causes would lose their jobs if genuine healing and reconciliation arrived. Strife and hate are just too lucrative.  

Yes, we have so many people (usually white) who are like beagles on the hunt, sniffing everywhere for signs of racism so they can self-righteously say, “You’re racist!” And they kill conversation and think their pompous, eager condemnations somehow help society.

Usually, from my experience, people like this have never had a ten-minute conversation with the minority group they pretend to be such noble advocates for. They don’t care; nobody would see them if they did that, so they don’t. They want attention and are high on their hubris.

There is room for hope; there is hope that Steve's children might not get called the N-word, there is hope that Janet's children will never get followed around by security every time they go into a store, there is hope that the young black lawyer won't get pulled over every other week for concerns that his exhaust pipe looks like it might be loose (even though the mounting bracket is new).  

But social media bluster, more social hibernation and fewer honest conversations won't get us there; neither will online DEI courses where you drag the video progress marker to the end and then take the quizzes. That's just theatrics. Moving away from this tremendous historical evil that is racism will take a lot more real talking.

Please subscribe and get at least three pieces /essays per week with open comments. It’s $5 per month and less than $USD 4. I know everyone says hey, it’s just a cup of coffee (with me, not per day but just one per month), but if you’re like me, you go, “Hey, I only want so many cups of coffee!” I get it. I don’t subscribe to many here because I can’t afford it.

But I only ask that when you choose your coffee, please choose mine. Cheers.

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