Tagged: african americans
A Case Study in Context Clues
My friend thinks I am an asshole for insisting that I gave him all the context he needed to understand this snippet.
Accompanying that image, I sent him:
His response:
It’s all there, I assure you. But let’s break it down.
Nobody says “negro” anymore. My adding this was to more assuredly call attention to the time period, geography, and mood of the snippet.
Montgomery and Negroes and 1956 all call to mind Civil Rights time period and events—and to, say, a person who fancies himself a historian—the bus boycott.
On “her employer”: The established time and place makes it near certain that the employer isn’t a negro and the her is. It is also fine at this point to run with the assumption that the employer is a man.
On “tells her”: This Employer-Boss Man-Mister-Master is telling her-negro-woman something to correct her behavior.
On “Everybody is saying”: classic (and classically faulty) passive and indirect approach to admonition.
On “Communists refuse to ride the bus”: here we have confirmation of bus boycott and Alabama. The use of the C-word in the 50s is meant to be so repulsive that any self-respecting Negro would never group themselves by action with the commies.
On “I know you got them told, Miss Lucy”: We have both (a) confirmation that employee is Negro Woman through “got them told” (read: I know you corrected everybody holding this errant belief) and (b) we found out we were wrong on sex of employer. Miss Lucy clearly indicates a woman. And on the whole, we appreciate the setup for the punchline that the Negro Woman just delivered. Compelling stuff.
On “‘Cause you wouldn’t let no communist raise your six chillun”: This is both (a) more confirmation that a Negro Woman is the her, adding specifics of job requirements, and (b) the punchline. The punchline is that the white employer lady—white employer ladies are supposed to be smart—turns out to be a rather grave hypocrite when the plain facts are recounted. This is because a refusing-bus-Negro-servant, whom everybody thinks must needs be communist, cannot possibly be communist, because if she was a commie, then it would mean employer-white-lady-boss would be raising communist children. An thar aint no way in hayell Klan members is commies.
****
As usual, “What is right is not always popular; what is popular is not always right.” Or as Mark Twain puts it, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reconsider.”
So I say again, “Yay truth!”
Unforgettable African-Americans
The following is something I have not shared with very many people. But it has been on my mind of late and I just want to put it down on paper, so to speak.
Lately, as I spend more and more time with African-Americans, I have come to see that everyone hates them. With Denver having a booming African population, it has become clear that even, and sometimes especially, Africans hate them. Naturally, this triggers my desire to defend them. But why?
Why do I love African-Americans so much? They aren’t my culture. We have very different lifestyles. There are some similarities in worldview, but once we leave the Gospel and Word of God, there is often a terrific break. My daughter loves the church and her friends there, but as she gets older, it’s going to be more and more difficult for her to live in both the white and black worlds. Yet I persist. Why? Why? Why? Why?
I’ll tell you.
So there I was. Balad, Iraq, ca. 2008 AD. It was my third of three deployments. My squadron–the aircrew at least–was exclusively male. The lone life support troop was often female. Can you imagine it? She’s half-way around the world, all by herself. Not all by herself, of course. She’s surrounded by men in their most primal environment. At this point in my story, you can probably guess that she was African-American. And she was Christian. I noticed this right away. The LORD was her rock.
One evening, she was with us at our dinner table. She ate quietly. The conversation was loose and the jokes were filthy. One of the more senior officers couldn’t seem to avoid vulgarities. Some might say he was in rare form with this woman present. It was like he was a fly and dick jokes were the light. He’d tell a story, and then the next would be worse. I kept looking towards her and I could tell she was not happy. I just wanted him to give it a rest. He didn’t.
When we returned from dinner, this woman went back to where she worked. There, for at least ninety nights, with no days off, she diligently cleaned and prepared all of our helmets, survival radios, vests, and most importantly the night vision goggles. She was the definition of mission-essential. She did this all by herself–save for when one of us would grace her with some attempted pleasantry.
Something inside me would not let the dinner scene go unaddressed. So I got off the couch and took a moment to walk over to where she worked and struck up a conversation. I said, fully expecting an explosion of gratitude, “If I was more of a man, I would have put a stop to the conversation you just had to listen to at dinner.”
Her response?
I remember her stony eyes more vividly than her words, but I do remember that with great resolve, she said, “Would you have?” Then she repeated it, “Would you have?”
What about you, reader? Do you possess enough penetration to see my mistake?
She didn’t want some empathetic friend. She didn’t want some “we’re all in this together” moment. She wanted righteousness. And the fact that I admitted that I knew it was wrong, made me more guilty, more unrighteous, than my boss.
This young woman had something most of us don’t recognize and are unable to do anything more than talk about if we do see. It’s something only got by experience. It’s something that’s forgettable–but that would be a tragedy.
The more you hate on her, the more you kill it. And for what?
I don’t know. Maybe that might help you understand why I love African-Americans and think you should too.
Captain’s Log 