Today, while being a good friend and walking my buddy’s dog, I got called “boy” by an old man walking around the neighborhood.
“Boy.” Twice.
I’m 32. I’m nearly seven feet tall. I have a beard that’s on the far side of House of David.
“Boy.”
I’m in Glendale, California. It’s 2010. I have two college degrees.
“Boy.”
Usually, this is the part where I try to make light of who said this to me, or I just pass it off to “America” and roll my eyes, but for some reason, it really got to me today. This old bastard who wasn’t brave enough to stop and explain himself or listen to anything I had to say (and I can understand that, I guess. I am just a “boy”) really fucking took a chunk out of me. I thought I was past that emotional state. I had heard enough from my home state’s history. Had seen enough in the papers. Heard stories. Heard my parents’ warnings and their own major calloused prejudices. Had seen enough of the casual brand of racism that it’d become water off a duck’s back. Been followed in enough stores, stopped by enough cops, had enough purses and children clenched tightly to mothers’ hands to be over it.
But, I guess I realized today that you’re never over it, because it is buried deep inside you every single fucking time it happens. It is not water off a duck’s back. It’s a growing tumor. It affects every decision I make, every relationship that I have, every reaction to even a perceived slight.
I really feel sick. Like sick sick. I had to lie down. I just got up to write this because I’m scared of swallowing this type of deal anymore. Maybe my reserves are full. Maybe they’ll cut me open and, ironically, I will be all black from all the shit that I’ve been laughing off or angrily ignoring for all this time.
I feel like when Dave Chappelle said that “racism is killing me” line, nobody really got how truthful that was. It was funny, but also one of the saddest things any mainstream American comedian had said in years. But you laugh, right? You have to, right? Does it drown out the sound of the beams rotting?
It IS killing me inside.
Fuck. I need a drink.
