See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Wrong as Always

Thanks to fightingwords for the link. And her comment assessing that victim mentality is more than occasionally applied to other people of color. (I'm reading Tim Wise's book White Like Me right now.)

Click here: http://www.counterpunch.org/wise04242006.html

Or here:
( Nothing, absolutely nothing, has to do with race nowadays, in the eyes of white America writ large. But the obvious question is this: if we have never seen racism as a real problem, contemporary to the time in which the charges are being made, and if in all generations past we were obviously wrong to the point of mass delusion in thinking this way, what should lead us to conclude that now, at long last, we've become any more astute at discerning social reality than we were before? Why should we trust our own perceptions or instincts on the matter, when we have run up such an amazingly bad track record as observers of the world in which we live? In every era, black folks said they were the victims of racism and they were right. In every era, whites have said the problem was exaggerated, and we have been wrong. )

It's a dry rub Carolina style meat with wet wipes.

I should state upfront first that I am writing this entry while heavily under the influence of smoked pork ribs.

mintwaster and I met up for drinks after work, if by "work" I mean her real job downtown and me spending the late afternoon at the grocery store and sex toy shop, which I do. After a couple rounds and some minor brainstorming, we decided no more work could be done until we ate at Honey 1. "But call first and find out if they have chicken," MW says. "They do," I answer with authority, because I'm a white man. But I call anyway to double-check.

We head over there via separate paths, her on the bike, me on the train. Walking in I knew something was up when precocious 7 year old white kid was behind the counter taking orders and out of the corner of my eye someone passing by with a big television camera. We order our food and sit down and MW casually but immediately has to go to the bathroom by the tv setup to scope it out, even though I know she took a piss 10 minutes earlier at a bar. Then she wastes no time going up to the mother of the kid and saying, "so, do you own this place?" No, she does not, but her husband is filming a segment for channel 7 news. "I know, ABC 7, I saw the camera."

We sit and whisper jokes about what's going on, if by "whisper" I mean talking loudly, which I do. The news guy, Steve Dolinsky (actual name) does a few takes of himself eating ribs and talking about good places to find bones in the city or something. Then he wants footage of other people eating ribs, and immediately asks the black family if they want to be taped eating his ribs.  "Um, we don't eat pork....but I can act like I'm eating it," the mom answers.  Steve's wife says we'll be on camera, which I found strange that she would volunteer us. I told mintwaster I would not perform without my boa. Except they said, hey, if we give you this order of ribs, will you eat it while we tape you?

Hell. Yeah.

Precocious kid delivers it and camera guy sets up and mintwaster digs into the fries and sauce and bread, but only looks lovingly at the pork. I dig in to the meat. They start rolling. From across the restaurant, someone jokes, "I thought you ordered the fish!" I point to MW and say that was her, I got rib tips. Then Steve Dolinsky informs us that eating fish at a barbecue joint is like going to Chinatown and ordering egg salad. I choke a little on my pork. An awkward silence. Then MW counters, "you know, black people can cook fish too......and there's some good egg salad in Chinatown, you just don't know where to go."

There was probably more awkward silence in the dining room after that, but I was too busy inhaling the pork to notice. I didn't even realize the camera was getting packed up when I paused to see if any sauce was all over my face.

The room cleared out a bit, the excitement of television gone, and Steve Dolinsky approaches to make some peace. At this point I haven't even really thanked him for the free half slab of ribs that I was preparing to polish off. He asks if we've been to Smoke Daddy and Fat Willy's and we politely discuss and disagree and he was sort of teeters off. We finish eating. We have more awkward conversations with strangers. mintwaster  tells me to stop using a "blackcent" at one point (I'm in my process), and then Steve Dolinsky is packing up to go, and I think about making peace and asking how the pulled pork sandwich is, but MW interrupts me to say, "you really can get good egg salad in Chinatown.....you just have to go to secret places white people don't know about."
"Oh yeah? Where's that?" Steve Dolinsky smirks.
"Um, I can't tell you.  It's secret."

He shakes his head and leaves and I still don't think I really thanked him for the free ribs.  But on May 26th at 10 pm, you'll see my southern cracker ass chowing down on them.  And if Steve happens to get a package in the mail with some chinese egg salad, it's obviously unrelated.