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This guy walks into a bar and says... - Jul 23, 2006 - Printable Version
- I Hate People With No Bones!
Grey Like Me: Part Six
by Ken Shade
I hate people with no bones, and I've met quite a few of them! Actually, I don't hate them. I said that because it's a more dramatic opening line. They do get on my nerves, though.
I've met them at work, in stores, the library and in churches. I'm just chatting along, and suddenly realize that I'm talking to a boneless wonder, which tends to ruin my day. I usually discover them during conversations about race.
It usually goes like this:
ME: Affirmative action is a good idea because brilliant insight article noun noun verb adverb verb article noun preposition article participle. The owners and managers of businesses never realize why article noun verb, so they verb adjective noun preposition verb article adjective direct object. Preposition, article clever simile adjective adjective noun, in the eyes of most employers, verb funny hyperbole adjective adjective because of their very whiteness.
OTHER PERSON: Well, I don't have a prejudiced bone in my body, but I stupid excuse, noun verb adjective obscene gerund rationalization inaccurate statement unfounded assertion verb noun adjective revelation of stupefying ignorance.
If you don't have a prejudiced bone in your body, then you have no bones.
"How can you say that?" you might be saying. "You don't know me."
I don't have to know you. All I have to know is that you're a human being. If you are a human being, and presumable most Faulking Truth readers are, then you not only have one or two prejudices, you have a lot of them. Without some prejudices, you would not know who you are. You would not be able to function. You would not be human.
Here's what I'm talking about:
You get up in the morning because your alarm goes off. You bought that alarm clock at K-Mart. You bought it at K-Mart because you don't go to Wal-Mart. You don't go to Wal-Mart because they refused to accept a return of yours once, and you vowed never to return. Never mind the fact that it was only one store, and only one employee, in an enormous retail company. You made your decision to be prejudiced against Wal-Mart, and you stuck with it. You didn't give them a chance to please you this time. Your decision was already made.
You shut off the alarm on your Sony clock/radio. You bought a Sony because a poorly wired Emerson clock caused your sister's house to catch fire in 1977. You didn't go to Consumer Reports to see which clock/radios have the highest quality, safest wiring and most mellifluous alarm tones. You knew what to buy because your sister told you what happened to her, and that was enough.
You go to the kitchen, and you select the maple and brown sugar instant oatmeal. You eat it because you know you like it. You don't try instant grits because you don't have any. You didn't buy them, and you didn't buy them because you've never had grits. You don't like the sound of the word "grits." Besides, aren't grits those things they Beverly Hillbillies ate? You're not a hillbilly, are you? Certainly not! So you passed by the grits.
You haven't been out of bed five minutes, and you're already deep into your world of prejudiced behavior. All of these decisions were made on prejudice, which is not necessarily a bad thing. You'd have gone insane if you had started over with each decision: researching anew, trying every place and everything in an effort to be fair. There aren't enough hours in the day to act without prejudice. Without your prejudices, you couldn't even decide what to wear each day. You cannot go through an elaborate process to make every decision in your life. You have to rely on thinking the way you thought yesterday, or remake yourself each day. Without prejudice, you would have no sense of identity.
Notice I didn't say you would have no identity. I said you would have no sense of identity. You would have an identity, alright, because other people would give you one. Based on your accent, your skin color, your height, your weight, your income, your car and a thousand other things, people will decide who you are for you, and treat you accordingly.
This is where prejudice become a problem. Within certain broad parameters, applying prejudice to people doesn't help you get through your day. It creates anger, resentment and hurt, which make life in human society more difficult.
Clarence Darrow had a lot to say about prejudice during his summation in the case of The People V. Henry Sweet.
Henry Sweet was a black man charged with killing a member of a mob that was menacing his brother's house in Detroit, in 1925. The mob did not appreciate the fact that Henry's brother, Dr. Ossian Sweet, had purchased a home in a previously all white neighborhood. Of course, had the Sweets been white, and the threatening mob black, there would have been no trial, and no reason for Clarence Darrow to come to Detroit to defend anybody. It would have been a clear case of self defense. These were the days of KKK power, though, so murder and conspiracy charges were brought against all eleven occupants of the house. The first trial resulted in a hung jury, so the prosecutors went after Henry alone the second time because he admitted firing a gun to frighten the mob.
During his closing in the second trial, Darrow displayed his typical eloquence:
"Now, gentlemen, I say you are prejudiced. I fancy every one of you are, otherwise you would have some companions amongst these colored people. You will overcome it, I believe, in the trial of this case. But they tell me there is no race prejudice, and it is plain nonsense, and nothing else. Who are we, anyway? A child is born into this world without any knowledge of any sort. He has a brain which is a piece of putty; he inherits nothing in the way of knowledge or of ideas. If he is white, he knows nothing about color. He has no antipathy to the black.
The black and the white both will live together and play together, but as soon as the baby is born we begin giving him ideas. We begin planting seeds in his mind. We begin telling him he must do this and he must not do that. We tell him about race and social equality and the thousands of things that men talk about until he grows up. It has been trained into us, and you, gentlemen, bring that feeling into this jury box, and that feeling which is a part of your life long training.
You need not tell me you are not prejudiced. I know better. We are not very much but a bundle of prejudices anyhow. We are prejudiced against other peoples’ color; prejudiced against other men's religion; prejudiced against other peoples’ politics; prejudiced against peoples’ looks; prejudiced about the way they dress. We are full of prejudices. You can teach a man anything beginning with the child. You can make anything out of him, and we are not responsible for it. Here and there some of us haven't any prejudices on some questions, but if you look deep enough you will find them; and we all know it.
All I hope for, gentlemen of the jury, is this: That you are strong enough, and honest enough, and decent enough to lay it aside in this case and decide it as you ought to."
Darrow was talking about a murder trial, but I borrow his words to make the point that we all have important decisions to make every day about how we are going to treat other people and what we are going to teach our children, by word and deed. We have to decide each day if we are going to allow our morality, hopes, compassion and love (I am not embarrassed to use that word.) to overcome the prejudice that has been programmed into us. Living in denial about what kind of creatures we really are, and declaring that we have no prejudices, isn't going to get us anywhere. I don't know exactly what step two is in the process of dealing with our biases is, but I know what step one is:
ADMIT THAT YOU HAVE THEM!
That may be difficult for most people, but I've put a lot of thought into this, and I'm going to help you out by setting an example. I am going to tell you one of mine. I realize that this might alienate or offend some people, but it's even more offensive to lie to myself, and become more of a problem than a solution.
Old people get on my nerves!
Now, this is coming from a middle-aged man who spent much of his youth working in nursing homes; whose mother is a nursing home administrator; who still has one living grandfather; whose most admired people are well on in years. I don't hate old people. I usually find them charming, and fun to learn from. Ninety-nine percent of my feelings about old people are positive.
So why do I list this as a negative prejudice I hold? I do it because of that other one percent. That other one percent is the feeling I get when an old man gets out of a mile-long RV with a BMW in tow, gets in front of me in a shopping line, and demands his senior citizen discount. The senior discount is going to save this guy eighteen cents, but he's going to stay in this line until the manager arrives to authorize it. He's going home to put the one Kwikset key he just had made into the front door of his 3,200 square foot ranch-style house in a gated community, and this Depends junkie is holding the whole line up over eighteen cents! (If I seem to be fixated on this eighteen cents thing, it's because this actually happened, and it still burns me.)
These events are actually rare, but they stand out in my memory because they piss me off. They piss me off to the extent that I am sure that there were times, when I worked retail, that I allowed my feelings about them to cause me to be less cordial and helpful with older customers. I'd look up and say to myself: "Oh, no. Look what's coming here. I'm not in the mood for this." Before the man even got to the counter, I had already allowed my pet peeve to determine what my interaction with him was going to be like.
My most closely held childhood secret was not about anything bad I did, or anything terrible that happened. It was about a secret life I lived because I knew that telling my friends would make me a laughing stock. The secret was that I used to visit old ladies.
It began when I was very small, maybe four years old. Mrs. Pearson lived next door to me, and Mrs. Moore lived down the alley.
I say "down the alley," but I have since been back to the old neighborhood and observed the fact that my "down the alley" was actually about thirty-five yards. When you're four, that's "down the alley."
Anyway, Mrs. Pearson and Mrs. Moore were widows, and they were old...very old. I used to go visit them for fun. There were kids to play with in the area, but I sometimes preferred the company of one of these old women. Mrs. Pearson would patiently endure my TV commercial serenades and plastic guitar strumming. (We've got them fire blazin' prices at Mathis Brothers Furnituuuuuure!) Mrs. Moore made me gingerbread men and egg sandwiches. They'd tell me all about what they did when they were small, and I thought it was wonderful.
As I got older, up until I was about sixteen, there were always old ladies I'd take it upon myself to meet and become friends with. I'd take them gifts. (They were big on lotions.) I'd bring in their papers. I'd help them do things around the house. Mostly, though, we'd sit and talk for hours. One old blind lady thought I was a girl because she felt my long hair, and I never told her otherwise. It didn't seem important. All of this went on sub rosa, and it was all very important to me.
So, which feeling will guide me as I encounter the elderly each day? Will I be thinking of Mr. Eighteen Cents, and his ilk? Or, will I have Mrs. Pearson, Mrs. Moore and their gentle sisters on my mind?
Each day I have the opportunity to make this decision anew.
I could, like so many people defending themselves against charges of prejudice, declare that "some of my best friends are old," and it would be true. It would be true, but it would not mean that I have no prejudice about age. The two things can exist in me, or any other person, at the same time. In fact, such conflicts exist in all of us. Our crucible is to bravely acknowledge them, understand them and deal fairly with the very people we hold them against. Every time we do that our children, the ones with Darrow's "pieces of putty" brains, are hard-wired with decency, not corruption. They see courage, not fear. They hear communication, not rage.
I have told you about one of my prejudices. Yours may be different, but you have them. This one of mine is about age. Yours may be about race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, income, accent, occupation, political affiliation, favorite color or I.Q. You may have a thing or two against mouth breathers, short folks, fat people, Old Spice wearers or the Alligator Skinned Woman at the state fair. Nobody can tell you what they all are. Only you can do that for yourself, and it takes courageous introspection. Whatever they are, the onus is upon you to put them to bed. Despite what Rush Limbaugh tells you, it is not the job of the people against whom you feel bias to "get over it." It is your job to get over it. It is not their problem, it is yours. They feel it when you treat them unkindly, but you feel it every minute of every day.
If you don't have a prejudiced bone in your body, then you have no bones.
No backbone, anyway.
(Editor's note: This is Part Six in an ongoing series from Ken Shade entitled "Grey Like Me." If you haven't read the rest of the articles, you're an idiot. Go read the entire series at: http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Archives.cgi?GuyWalksIntoBar
Do it now!)
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