Ho Ho No

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This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists.

Some experiences are “aha” segues to understanding. Air travel over the recent Christmas holiday (never again) was one such segue, as was a realization regarding many people of color.

Let me begin this by saying I was brought up in a Christian home where we were taught the importance of recognizing everyone’s dignity. We don’t do that because people demand it; we do it because it’s the right thing to do.

I am no stranger to diverse peoples and cultures. I have lived on three continents and speak several languages. The only culture that I have been unable to navigate successfully is that of American blacks. My regard for this subculture is in inverse proportion to the time I spend interacting with them.

At sixty-something, I know that reaching an understanding of race isn’t like a road-to-Damascus lightning bolt. It’s more like a long, slow final Jenga block pull preceded by a lengthy teetering that portends an eventual crash. When the crash occurs, you’re not surprised. What’s nerve-wracking is the interminable shaking of the structure before the tumble.

Recent holiday travels found me, some days before Christmas, making a quick trip from my home in Tennessee to see my elderly parents in a Midwestern city along the upper Missouri River. I flew there and back on Southwest Airlines, which was thrown into chaos on Christmas Eve when flights had to be rerouted due to fog. I should say at the outset that my wife and I have long avoided the airports in St. Louis and Chicago whenever possible because of the rude, dismissive attitude and treatment we have consistently experienced there. Let’s not dance around it: that treatment has usually come from black airline employees.

With the pressure of thousands of stranded travelers trying to get home on December 24, that treatment only worsened. I have come to believe that blacks cope in such situations by adopting a who-gives-a-damn attitude. (Are they that way toward each other?) As I was trying to get myself routed home, in a half-dozen interactions in four different cities, the averted-eye-contact, slow-speech, and mumbled responses were not only unhelpful, they telegraphed just how little these black, typically overweight women actually cared. The slightest interest in helping me get home would have meant a lot, but it was not forthcoming.

In Chicago, I had a window of less than an hour to make a connection that would have allowed me to be home for Christmas. Approaching a black female airline employee at the gate where my flight had just been cancelled, a number of us were in the same situation, appealing to her for help. She looked at us deadpan, and with little interest or emotion, said, “Y’all’s gonna need to jus’ wait or ah’m gonna step back for a mental health break.” She was bothered by the fact that she might have to function at a higher level than usual and with more than casual speed to serve her customers.

I approached another black woman at a different counter. “My flight’s just been cancelled. Can you tell me where I can get help, please?”

In another stony, no-eye-contact response, she said, “Get in line.” The St. Louis shuffle only now in Chicago. The line was 30 people deep. At that rate, I might have gotten help by New Year’s Eve.

Both of these women were about as useful as a banjo in a firefight, so I headed down the concourse in search of anyone WHITE to help me. At gate 14, I saw a thirty-something white woman who had just finished boarding the last of C group and had returned to the desk. I approached her calmly and asked, “Please, can you help me? My flight was just cancelled.”

The woman smiled, looked me in the eye and said, “Show me your boarding pass. Let’s see what we can do.” I could almost hear a chorus of angels. In 90 seconds, she had me rebooked to Nashville by way of Cleveland, departing shortly.

In that moment, it occurred to me that black women don’t give a damn and even seem to relish white distress. It would have taken zero effort for those black women to have shown even mild interest in helping me, but they had absolutely no damns to give. That has been the consistent demeanor I’ve experienced for years while going through airports in St. Louis, Chicago, and everywhere from black, female airline employees.

While waiting for my Cleveland departure, I was herded into a gate area jammed with desperate travelers. I reflected in that moment that I’d rather shave my private parts with a weed whacker than attempt air travel again over the holidays. The inbound flight had just deposited passengers to Chicago and was being refueled for our departure. It was then that a metaphor for what’s going on in America with blacks occurred to me.

In the departure lounge, seven airport courtesy wheelchairs were lined up like taxi cabs, each holding an obese black, only one of whom appeared to be my age or older. They were awaiting airport employee escorts, who soon arrived, six whites and one Asian. Then, just like that, the fleet of melanin-enhanced rotund individuals were shuttled off, in the care primarily of whites — a reverse of Driving Miss Daisy. That was the metaphor that came to me: we are becoming the servants of blacks.

On board the last leg of my journey, while seeking some escape, I perused the free movies. One of the first offerings was the 2014 “progressive” NEW Annie with a black Little Orphan Annie. My first thought was that the “orphan” part was the only carryover this “cultural appropriation” had borrowed from the 1977 Broadway show.

Instead, I chose Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby to get me to Nashville.

Later, having finally touched down for good, I drove out of Music City toward my rural home, where there is no diversity, where waitresses call you “baby” and if you put your emergency flashers on along the side of the highway, someone will pull over in two minutes to help. This rural, Southern place is one of the last that will be poisoned by the multicultural race toxin that is afflicting the cities, but it is experiencing an influx of white, non-Southerners who are escaping those cities’ violent, free-for-all freak shows. (There is a saving grace to this influx: there’s a limit to our available housing.) The funny thing is that those big-city sophisticates come here and then bluster with disdain for the conservative, Southern whites they encounter. They’re terrified at the sight of Confederate battle flags (mine’s in a front-facing window of my house), which is good. Those flags serve as liberal repellent.

My nephew Joe, in his thirties, who lives in a growing, middle-sized Northern city, said something to me not long ago that encapsulated why I love living here in rural Tennessee: “What’s going on in the country with liberals and race issues will torpedo this city in another 30 years; it won’t touch you there for another 300.” Joe is feeling the shake.

Shake and bake, Joe. Shake and bake.

If you have a story about how you became racially aware, or about your firsthand experience with race, we’d like to hear it. If it is well written and compelling, we will publish it. Please feel free to use a pen name and send it to us here.