"Sometimes I Hate Your People"

Update below.

Saturday was errand day. The back seat of my car had three garbage bags full of clothes which just weren't right for my new mid-30s rotund look. It was off to the East Towne Goodwill. The Dulcinea was accompanying me and she asked to be dropped off at Scrapbook Memories over on Thierer Road in the same mall as Maharaja. I do so and zip off to Goodwill where I deposit the clothes belonging to the thinner me. On my return, I'm sitting at the stoplight at Zeier and Lien Roads when my cell phone rings. I find that it is The Dulcinea and she's asking where I am. After assuring her that I was but a minute away, I hung up. It wasn't long before I pulled into the parking lot and she sits down next to me in the car looking glum.

"Sometimes I hate your people," she says to me.

Little did you white people know that I represent our entire race.

I ask her what happened and she proceeds to tell me how the white clerks at the scrapbook store ignored her while white patrons who entered after her were given their rapt attention. The D was upset and angry. And rightly so. It's something that's happened to her before, as if I need to write those words. The most recent incident was earlier in the week when she was at a medical clinic. The D was in the waiting room with another patient, a white woman. The woman looked at her and drew her purse closer and clutched it tightly.

Back in my car, I took a last swig of my egg nog slushie (a bottle of egg nog that I'd left in the car overnight which was only then melting) and The D asked something akin to, "Why can't people just see me for what I am? I'm dressed like a normal, average person…" Racism, in both subtle and less overt guises, is tireless and unreasoning and I had no explanation then and have none now.

This happened a couple days after I wrote a post at my music blog about the lack of colored faces in best-of-2007 lists/indie rock. A more clever writer than myself could find some ingenious way to link the two but all I can say is that they're related. Not equivalent, mind you, but related. Motivations are different, contexts are different, but what they have in common is how small things cascade together into a larger pool. If The D were to go through life having experienced what she did on Saturday only once or twice, perhaps we could ignore those incidents and write them off as being negligible. Indeed, any once instance of this can be viewed this way but they pile up with those times when a white woman clutches her purse a bit tighter. There are times when we have the TV on and she'll see a token minority character while I'm sitting there seeing another bland sitcom. These times too cascade into the pool.

This alabaster-skinned blogger doesn't presume to speak for my girlfriend or anyone of color but I can imagine that all of these things and others of the same ilk add up to give a picture that is perhaps not too pretty or, at the least, is very light. There were a couple blog posts from last summer, I believe, which were linked to by the usual sites in which a person of color was bidding Madison adieu. Unfortunately I don't have the links but, if memory serves, each of them indicated that there are racist assholes here in Madison – no surprise there. But they also remarked that many liberal whites are complacent; they think that this town is so liberal that they don't see the things which can make colored people feel unwanted or ignored. If anyone recalls these posts and has links, please let me know. No doubt my memory is faulty and their views were not represented totally correctly here.

Once the shock had worn off, The D and I found ourselves sitting in the parking lot. She wanted to just get the hell out of there, to put some distance between her and those clerks. We were both hungry so it was decided to get some lunch. I can't recall who suggested it, but we soon found ourselves headed to Jada's Soul Food. Southern cooking is comfort food for The D as it reminds her of her aunt and grandmother in Alabama – the colored half of her family. Plus Jada's just made great food period, with the catfish being a near-orgasmic experience for The D. On top of that, it was also a place to go to seek shelter from my people. Presumably it would be like the last time we were there when I found myself the only white person in the joint. It's weird how skin color is at the same time so negligible a quality and so important.

We turned onto Beld only to find that Jada's had closed. A cached copy of their website says this is only temporary and that they'll find a new location. I sure bloody hope so! Personally, I think they should move to the storefront that used to house Francois' and Sunprint on Milwaukee Street over by my house. Then I'd have Jada's and Papa Bear's BBQ within close proximity. And speaking of Papa Bear's, I was there a couple weeks ago and found out that they are going to deliver soon. I love that joint. I love the food and I love the utilitarian décor and the staff have always been friendly. There's nothing pretentious about the joint and it just plain has the qualities of a great neighborhood eatery. Baby Bear was cooking that night and I told him that they need desserts – pecan pie, peach cobbler, etc. He said that other folks have made the same comment so I am hoping that they'll soon have some sweets.

Update: Kristian Knutsen of The Daily Page sent me these links which address racism and diversity in Madison and were written by people of color:

http://kveurbanleaguemadison.blogspot.com/2007/12/madisons-diversity.html

http://jrayp3.livejournal.com/7695.html

The LiveJournal entry is one that I recall fairly well. Didn't someone who moved to Milwaukee briefly have a home at POST called "608 to 414" or something like that?