{a cup of slow poison}

So good of the Graces – or gods of wisdom or whomever – to cluster around the doorway of the library, isn’t it? This is a library in the city centre in Glasgow, of course, which might account for my wisdom and graces abandoning me recently –

So, someone told me a racist joke this weekend at a party.

Granted, to you, this may not be a huge-big-deal, but this is NOT the sort of thing that happens to me. I am one of those people who struggles to say that they have been openly discriminated against, in vulgar, obvious ways — I never had a Countee Cullen incident, for instance. In school, people didn’t do much more than make fun of my name, my clothes, my face, my shoes, my weight, my hair — but from the point of view of ME being a loser, not because my race made me so. So, big deal? Yes. This was a big deal. I mean, at what gathering does a guy lean over and tell me — ME — a joke in questionable taste? He can see I’m not part of the dominant culture, and I’d think the assumption would be that I’m that much more not into mocking people on the basis of race. And yet, that’s not the memo he got. He got up from his seat, and sat close, and told his joke just to me.

Which just overflows with irony, for me: there were parents of Asian exchange students, right there in the room. There were high school kids – Asian and otherwise – racing around the house, there were people of all colors sitting around us, gabbing in loud and cheerful tones.

There had been a fairly intellectual conversation on the thesis of, “Oh, in ten or so years, all the cars on the road are going to be self-driven,” which was a topic worth of some great discussion – and there had been, and there were people all around us, comparing notes, voicing excitement and trepidation. Then, there was me. There was this guy. And there was – instant paralysis, on my part.

These are the moments we all wish for do-overs. I’m pretty over time travel books, but if I could, at any other time, make a time machine work, these are the types of instances I would save it for – so I could freeze time, marshal my thoughts, and then, ready — GO.

I didn’t have that time machine. I had no time to marshal my thoughts. My joker was laughing so hard I could barely make out the words he’d moved so close to me to say. I got just enough – just enough, to pull back and stare at him, and think, “REALLY?”

I did not crack a smile. I did not even look at him. I said, intelligently, “Well.”

Smooth, huh? “Well.”

“Well,” I don’t know enough about the technology upcoming to know who will be writing it – scientists and engineers from what country. “Well,” I don’t know if the people programming the cars on the road will be from any particular nation or ethnicity, and honestly, there’s nothing on earth that actually proves people from any nation are better or worse drivers than any other. “Well,” I’m fairly sure that there will be fewer crashes, because that’s the point, that crashes are a product of human intervention, and if the cars drive themselves, there won’t be anything to do with Whites or Blacks, or Asians driving, nor any of the stupid things he made his stupid joke about. But, no. I couldn’t find all these words. I just said, “Well.”

That still just bugs the hell out of me.

I knew I didn’t agree with the man’s words. I knew I didn’t agree with his sentiments. I knew I didn’t like the come-close-whisper-in-your-ear sniggering, the back-slapping, eye-watering, “You get me, don’t you” in-groupishness of the whole moment. And, yet, I didn’t do anything. We could use a lot of words on what I could have done and why I didn’t do anything, but the bottom line is that I sat there, and let the moment happen without responding. It was the equivalent of accepting a cup of slow poison from a person at a bar – instead of slapping the poison away, like any sane person, I took the cup in my hand, and sat, and …held it.

Of the other bitter anniversaries this last week has contained, none more awful, more bitter, more brutal than the anniversary of fifty years ago, yesterday, and the Montgomery church bombing in which four wee girls were martyred and Civil Rights leaders were finally able push through some much-needed legislation about fairness and equality in the viciously Jim Crow South. There were a lot of things said, back then, a lot of hand-wringing, and, probably, a lot of jokes made – but today I read the account of a speech made at the Birmingham Young Men’s Business Club. And, the words of the speech could have been made today – this week – last month – at any time. This is not a man who heard a thing, or saw a thing, and said, “Well.” He stood up – and spoke – and had to vanish his family from the city where he’d worked and lived his whole life. He wasn’t blind to the effect of words – he just wasn’t afraid to speak them.

It seems that we are, as human beings, constantly being confronted with things which challenge our belief in the world as it exists within our brains. The world we want only lives there fully – in our brains. In mine, I am surrounded by friends who think, who hold respect for other cultures and people, who may not believe as I do, but who can vigorously and with emphatic kindness argue for the consideration of those beliefs. In the world in my brain I can slow down and think before I speak, and the word, “Well,” is enough to pause conversation, to invite inquiry as to the expression on my face.

I want to make that world. I have to start, I think, by speaking.

Next time, the word, “Well,” will be the beginning of a sentence.