Barnabas Monkeypants

(Another off-topic post. There are pictures of Henry interspersed, however, so you’ll at least be able to enjoy that.)

There are people, like my mother, who seem to be magnets for those who want to tell their life story. She can be in an elevator and by the time the door opens on the 12th floor, some poor woman has confessed to her all about her three marriages, her recent knee surgery, and the fact that she stopped tithing in 1995.

I have a similar affliction, but instead of hearing the ramblings of the lonely, I get to hear about the insane and/or racist.

This started a couple of years ago when, in back-to-back-to-back hair appointments in three different cities (Denver, Cincinnati, and Chicago), I was bombarded by the barbers’ hatred of black people.

In Cincinnati, the barber proudly proclaimed that he wouldn’t cut the hair of “the coloreds” and has had several fines and hearings in front of the Ohio Barber Commission because of this. (Did you know that there was such a thing? I looked it up: every state has one.) This guy was old and miserable and sort of pathetic, but I’m ashamed to say I didn’t say anything in defense of those who he wronged. I also rationalized that he was the one with the scissors and he could do some serious damage to my already thinning head of hair, so it was best to stay quiet.

This is something I’m not proud of. Usually I’m a pompous know-it-all and will tell people the what-what if I feel they’re being irrational or hateful or doing something illegal. (Don’t even get me started on downloading of music or movies without paying for it.) But with these guys, I stayed silent.

In Denver, I heard of the barber’s exodus from the city to the suburbs because he didn’t want to be the only white face on his block full of what he called “the brownies”. (This is Denver, mind you, which only has an 11% African American population. We’re not talking about Mobile, Alabama.)

And back in Chicago, as I sat in the barber chair of a place conveniently located just around the corner from our place (that kills me, you know; it’s right there and I’ll never return), the man asked me if I had problems with roaches. “No,” I said naively. “We have an exterminator that comes every other week to spray for bugs.” “Not those roaches; the Negroes.”

I didn’t know what to say. Initially I was really appalled at the guy for such a comment, but then I was a bit amazed that I had never heard of the racist slight “roaches”. (I mean, it’s nowhere to be found in that song from Hair.) I stammered something about how I liked everyone (until I meet them and start talking to them and then all bets are off), but he either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. (In reality, as a practicing curmudgeon, I am disgusted with everyone equally, regardless of their ethnicity or religious beliefs or sport-team affiliation.)

This got me thinking: do I look like a racist? What is it about me that screams “this man will willingly listen to your hateful speech”? At last check I have no swastika tattoos or George Wallace t-shirts.

Lately, this type of situation has moved from the barbershop (I’ve had regular, closeted racists cutting my hair, as opposed to those who prefer the hate-speech avenue) to the taxi. I’ve taken a ton of cab rides lately, mostly lasting at least a half-hour, as I go from my place to the airport, the airport to some hotel, back to the airport, etc., and it seems that if there’s at least a half-hour available, I’ll hear some sort of ranting and raving of a madman.

I’ve heard white drivers complain about “the Arabs”, the Pakistanis kvetch about the Indians, and East Africans complain about the West Africans (never did I know that the Sudanese so hated the Nigerians). And each of these men (it’s always men) always assumes that I agree with them.

The Sudanese driver who was driving me to Midway a couple of weeks ago railed on how stupid, cheap, godless those Nigerians were, and after he was done, he turned around and said, “But I don’t have to tell you that.” Right. I’m with you, man. Those damn Nigerians.

And if it’s not hatred to another country’s residents, the comments become pretty mysoginistic. (Women really are second-class citizens in most of the world, aren’t they?)

With cabbies, there are times when I try and change their mind — especially the women stuff — but it never really helps. They just laugh and then call up some friend on their cell phone, talk in a language that is so far away from anything I could comprehend that I can’t even catch a word, and likely make fun of the silly American in the back seat. (With the Somalian, I protested: “Now, all the Nigerians I know have really been stand up people.” I think he realized that, in fact, I don’t know anyone from that area of Africa [or any part of the continent, actually].)

But it doesn’t last very long until they’re off the phone and having a jolly laugh with me about this or that.

I have to do something about this. I know that I can’t change all these people (or any of them, probably), but I’d like to try.

Either that, or I have to start hating Nigerians.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Off Topic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.