I wanna love You better whatever it takes . . .

(I will be posting a version of this on the PRFC blog also . . . )

So I saw a snippet about this case of mistaken identity on the news, and knew immediately that I was going to use it as this week’s topic . . .

but then I made the mistake of starting to read the forum comments about the piece. I got through about forty or fifty of them before I had to close the page . . .

it wasn’t the “well, duh, don’t run from the police” written by people who clearly  have no sense of what it is to not be able to trust that the police are on your side . . . or the “they’re used to it in THAT neighborhood” . . .

no, it was the endless barrage of pure, vitriolic old-school racist hatred that was evident in post after post after post. There was even a person commenting who had (thinking himself quite witty, I’m sure) given himself the screen name “Mark Fuhrman”. And phrases such as “porch monkeys” and “hood rats” (and much, much worse) used to describe the people in the southeast Grand Rapids neighborhood where the incident had occurred.

I suppose I should try to tell myself that it’s just a case of cowardly people taking shelter in the relative anonymity of the internet, but to be honest, it really frightens me that there is still this level of hatred simmering in the hearts of people in and around this city. It makes me wonder if there really is any hope for us . . .

I just wanted to spend a couple of relaxing hours playing bingo. And I am pretty sure that this is what just about everybody there wanted, although my “once-every-three-weeks” habit is on a slightly different pattern than that of most of the people there . . . (I once heard one woman tell a friend, “I haven’t been going as much lately . . . I’m down to about three or four times a week.” !!!)

If you’d asked me before yesterday, I would have launched into a lovely schpiel about how bingo is the great equalizer, how people of all ages and all walks of life co-exist peacefully (except when the caller is too slow, or too fast, or when a newbie like myself inadvertently breaks one of the 621 unspoken laws of the bingo hall . . . ) But since I’ve started visiting a new-to-me bingo hall, I’ve seen a few cracks in the formerly shiny verneer of my “we’re all the same at the bingo hall” fantasy. 

I had seen a few moments of tension at this particular bingo hall in the past, but what I witnessed yesterday was more intense than previous ones, and harder to attribute to something other than racism.  

I don’t know how it started, but all of a sudden, this crotchety old white woman who was one of the workers  (or whatever they’re called) that day was yelling at an African-American woman, “And if you keep it up, I’ll call the police!” Of course, at this point she had everybody’s attention. What had the woman done? Had she lit up a joint at the table? (not that you’d be able to tell with all the smoke in there, anyway!) Had she stolen someone else’s dauber? Had she tampered with the bingo calling equipment?

No. She had answered a cell phone call. (This particular bingo hall had recently banned the use of cell phones during games.)

Lest you think I’m prematurely racializing this, please bear with me. 

There was a great deal of murmering going on among the women sitting in my general area. I was upset too. “call the police”? because she took a call? I’m sure the woman knew the rules . . . she was by herself, so she would have had nobody to watch her cards while she left the room to take a call . . . and she must have had some legitimate need to take the call. (she was an older woman–probably in her 40’s or 50’s–I say that because she wasn’t some young kid with the phone glued to her ear.)

The woman was visibly upset by the interaction, and quickly took her call out to the hallway . . . but for me, the mood had been broken, and my “fun” afternoon of bingo had gone downhill rather quickly. The next few times the woman’s phone rang, I saw her walking very quickly towards the exit, and she certainly looked stressed, if not downright afraid.

It didn’t help that at one point, I looked over at where she was sitting, and saw her dabbing at her eyes . . . yes, I think she was crying. What I had interpreted in her face as anger a moment before was now transformed in my mind to something much more heart-wrenching. And although it’s possible that her tears (if they were indeed more than just a reaction to the smoke in the air, as I suspect that they were) were tears of anger, they still broke my heart. I could feel the humiliation she felt at having been spoken to like she was a child, or worse. And i felt myself in this strange no-man’s-land once again, as someone with the external appearance of the oppressor, but having (at least to some extent) the mind of the oppressed.

My anti-racism radar (not to mention my pathological codependency) fully engaged, I started to hone in on rumblings and to notice some things:

• All of the bingo workers were white, and come to think of it, I didn’t remember ever having seen an African-American working at a bingo game in Grand Rapids. This got me thinking about the whole ”gatekeepers” concept and the question of who has access to the power.
• Probably 40 to 50% of the players were African-American (I didn’t count). If “they” would get together and boycott this bingo hall, there would be a serious loss of revenue at this particular game. (I’ll leave it to someone else to talk about the exploitative nature of bingo and other forms of gambling . . . I’m still in denial on that one.) In fact, since I am such a <tongue in cheek>Cool White Person</tongue in cheek>, I actually said as much to a woman at the next table. (I hope I said “we” and not “you”, but I can’t be sure. But seriously, and this is NOT something I’m saying to make myself sound like the CWP that I am, but I was upset enough that I DON’T want to go back to that particular bingo hall now.)
• Some of the women at the next table over were saying, “I stopped coming here for a while after that LAST incident.”, so clearly this was not the first time there had been this type of conflict.
• At one point, there was some flap over someone who had won one of the games (an African-American woman sitting two tables over from me), and I heard a snippet of a conversation between some of the workers–”look out for ________” (I didn’t catch exactly what the offense was, but from the context, I got the sense that it was an accusation of cheating or some kind of deception). Then I heard the worker say words that made me shudder . . . “they do that . . . they come in late and they _______” (fill in the blank with some bingo terminology that  probably would not have made sense to me even if I HAD heard it.) Oh no. She said “they“. I heard it (remember, at this point my antennae were already tuned) and my heart sunk. I tried to convince myself that I hadn’t heard what I thought I had heard. Surely this white woman with the bad haircut had only meant “they” in the generic “bingo players” sense. Surely she hadn’t meant, “those people who come into OUR bingo hall”. But try as I might, I just could not convince myself that I had interpreted it wrong.

The thing is, I spent the rest of the afternoon looking at the crotchety old white woman with disdain and anger, keeping an eye on her lest she try some other antics . . . but then I stopped, and reminded myself that, rather than praying, “I thank You, God, that I am not like that sinner”, that I ought to keep in mind my own racism, buried though it may be under a flurry of well-intentioned words and attempts at “I’m-not-like-THOSE-white-people” coolness. And the problem, after all, is not that one crotchety old woman, but rather the deeper racism that hangs over all of our heads like the stale smoke of the bingo hall . . .

But it still broke my heart to realize that even here, in this seemingly benign setting, the racial divide was once again rearing its ugly head, showing up so clearly for those with eyes to see it. And I wanted to shut my eyes to it . . . I wanted to not see, to pretend that what I had seen didn’t mean what I knew in my heart of hearts that it meant. 

I just  wanted to play bingo. I just wanted to have some fun on a Saturday afternoon. And yet, I walked into a landmine . . . because this isn’t just a “Lorraine” thing–”there she goes again!”–no. if you open your eyes, it’s everywhere . . .

and I’m just not ready to shut up about it.  

Is this seriously going to be a non-item? Come on, folks! I’m sure that the man will say that it was “merely” a dig at Obama’s position on gun control . . . but I don’t find anything even REMOTELY funny about a white (”CHRISTIAN”) Republican making jokes about someone trying to shoot Senator Obama.

And maybe Field is right . . .  maybe it’s true that this country isn’t ready for a black president . . . but I am not giving up just yet . . .  even if 68% of people polled on our local right-wing talk radio station didn’t think that this t-shirt was offensive . . . even if I saw with my own eyes the Secret Service swarming all over downtown Grand Rapids when Obama was in town . . .

    I forget when or where I first even heard of Sisyphus. It seems to me that I was watching a movie that made some reference to it, and I had to ask someone to explain it to me.  but from the moment that image entered my consciousness, his plight has always resonated with me.  This has been nowhere more true than when I have faced a foot of snow covering my sidewalk and driveway. Last year, I “paid” (it was on a credit card, which I’m certain is not yet paid off, so I can’t really say that I’ve “paid” it yet?!) for a service whereby my driveway would be plowed each time it snowed. (I can handle the sidewalk . . . at least, I can handle carving out one little strip of the sidewalk so that it’s free of snow.) This went well, until near the end of the winter, when the driveway went unplowed two or three times in a row. When I called, I was told that his truck had broken down, blah blah blah. Finally, he told me, “I’ll make it up to you next year.” Of course, by the time he spoke those words, I was already quite clear that there was simply not going to BE a “next year” with him . . .

Sadly, however, neither was there a “next year” with anybody else. When it came close to being wintertime again this year, I was completely out of credit cards with which to perform my usual ”smoke and mirrors” maneuvers. A neighbor had approached my tenant a few times, and said that he would be willing to shovel our driveway all winter for less than what I had paid the (ultimately delinquent) plow guy.  We took him up on it . . . only to find that he, too, soon flaked out. In one sense, it was okay . . . he had done a really good job a few times, so I tried to tell myself that I’d gotten my money’s worth . . . but at the same time, I was frustrated. Did he assume that he could screw me over because he’d seen someone else do it?

Anyway . . . tonight I shoveled. The city plows had blocked in my driveway in such a way that it was impossible for me to even pull the car in . . . so I did my usual sidewalk path, and then attempted to tackle the driveway. I got about a third of the way through before giving up . . . but it only took me five minutes to pull out my phone and say to myself, “I need to take pictures so that I can blog about this.”

I was so inspired that I almost went inside to get my regular camera. but I didn’t. I didn’t do much of anything. now I am sore, and I still have a buttload of snow in my driveway . . .

um. I don’t think any of this actually has to do with Sisyphus . . . except you’re supposed to get the visual . . . as much as I am trying to push away the mounds of snow, they just keep returning . . .

it’s madness. but now I need to go to sleep and hope & pray that I can get out of bed in the morning . . . because of course now I’m sure that I’m going to die of a heart attack, or at least a backache . . .                                                                     

I got wind of this from an e-mail . . . one of those “reply to all” things–and right away I thought it had to be some kind of urban legend.

 Turns out . . . not quite.

http://www.publius.org/help/jan15th.asp

 it’s a bunch of gobbledygook, but the short answer appears to be: I can’t vote for Obama today. WTF? I will vote for Hillary if/when she’s all we have left, but I’m not ready for that just yet.

politics is so idiotic.