Wednesday I went to the DMV to renew my driver's license. In Indiana that is required every four years. It must be done in person and an eye exam is given. I drive better than I walk. Because of disbility, I couldn't stand in the long waiting line. I asked the person who was the last in line (a young black woman) if she would call me when she was done so that I could sit and wait.

In the meantime my friend came in and offered to stand in line for me. I said "no thanks, that black gal is saving my place". I meant nothing disrepectful but, on reflection, I wish I hadn't said it that way. I know she heard me. I could have said "the woman in the blue dress", but I didn't. There were no other black people in the line, it was the easiest thing to say.

I once worked with a black engineer (not too many of those). Now and then, a person who didn't know Lonnie would come into our area for business with Lonnie. Invariably, the person would come up to Lonnie and say "are you Lonnie----?" Pretty obvious that someone had previously identified Lonnie as "the black guy". Lonnie was not angry at this, but he certainly was aware of it. After the person had left, he liked to say with irony "hmmm, I wonder how he knew who I was?"

I have had similar experiences since I began to use a walker. People recognize me as the guy with walker I am sure my brother has been identified in advance as "the tall bald guy". Others are identified by whatever physical features make them distinctive in a certain setting. This is human nature, not racist, not "ablist".

Then why do I wish I had not identified her that way? I know I won't do it again.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 11, 2001

Answers

Yes Lars, you are a racist, able-ist, sexist, homophobic, species-ist, anti-environmentalist, meat-eating, gun-totin' Repuglicon bigot. Did I leave anything out?

-- (Dumbya@dumpster.dum-dum), May 11, 2001.

Lars! I just knew you were a Hoosier! Did you have the hots for that black woman? I had a black woman once, man oh man was she tight! (for you old folks, tight is a modern slang word meaning excellent) By the way, I am a black lesbian. Don't be offended, I mostly like white girls.

-- A friendly Hoosier (HoosierGirl@aol.com), May 11, 2001.

Lars: Well, if YOU are, then I guess *I* am, as well. I regularly lose SO in the mall and stop to ask folks if they've seen him. My description is usually, "Tall black guy, tank top, shorts, silly little socks, and run-over gym shoes."

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 11, 2001.

Lars, since the term "black" has fallen out of favor, you might have done an anachronism, but I don't see it as even remotely close to racism. That you regret having said it despite your intending no harm, is testament to the degree of political correctness conditioning we are subject to.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), May 11, 2001.

Thank you David. I was preparing for self-immolation.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 11, 2001.

Lars- In my opinion, this is one of those "PC" things that has spilled over into the realm of the ridiculous. So, in an effort to effectively and efficiently describe someone, you pointed out the color of that person's skin. I say big deal.

-- CD (costavike@hotmail.com), May 11, 2001.

Or......you could have not said a word Lars and have had an anonymous internet forum phantom suggest through some type of supposed encrypted,linguistic,spelling science that you are indeed the dastardly perpetrator of such remarks.

And then only to have someone you know attest those same remarks to you as well,via the same set of (LOL) scientific protocol.

Then,lastly,after assuring the person who is also questioning the source of those remarks that you are not responsible for them only to have the same doubt cast your way via lack of an apology or by their silence.

So ya see,wheather you made those remarks or not doesn't really matter, except to the people who really know you or those that will take your word at face value based on their past experience with you.

Your good name and long standing principles mean nothing,except of course to you.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), May 11, 2001.

We love ya capn!

-- (cin@cin.cin), May 11, 2001.

Years ago I was a (starving) full time supervisor in a restaurant. We had a PA system to call patrons to the counter to get their food. The system either broke or was vandalized, and there was no back up plan to identify which orders went to which customers.

I told the girl at the order counter to write down an identifying characteristic for each customer on the ticket. I gave her the examples "blue hat" and "brown dress". She took it quite a bit further than I intended, writing "fat woman with underarm stains" and "pregnant two weeks too long" and so forth. This was meant to be a private joke for the cook, who was the only person with access to the tickets. We delivered the food to the customers without including the offending tickets.

About an hour before he divested himself of his uniform in full view of the patrons as he quit his job, the cook began to place the orders with their identifying characteristics under the food containers. I guess that was about a minute or two after he fixed the PA system without telling me. The girl who took the orders resumed calling customers to the counter to pick up their food. The customers began to form a line to complain about the tickets they found. Unfortunately, I was the highest ranking employee they could tar and feather.

I told you that to tell you this...

As offended as the fat ladies and the bald men and the pregnant teenagers were, they were not as offended as the customers who had been identified as "black lady in blue dress" or "black family". They felt they were being targeted by race. They were hurt more than angry.

The only thing I could do was pull out all of the offending tickets and show them what had been written about all of the other customers. I apologized for their having to experience this during Sunday dinner. I asked the girl to apologize too, and to her credit she was truly remorseful. She wept as she explained to them that I had told her to do that.

I offered to have the cook beheaded and gave them the name and phone number of our company president. I fully expected to be fired.

Then the cook took off his uniform and marched out of the kitchen in his skivvies as he abandoned his employment.

The customers asked me what kind of establishment we were running. I told them it was as close to hell on earth as could be managed with air conditioning. I told them I would likely lose my job, but I thought they ought to sue the company. They decided to let the matter drop.

They were hurt by being referred to as black. They shouldn't have to come up with a coherent reason why. It really is better to refer to someone by an item of clothing or something that is not body-specific.

-- helen (a123@b.c), May 11, 2001.

Hey! Unfair, Capn. I told you in an E-mail that I was sorry. I even offered to publicly apologize if it would make you feel better. You didn't respond. I DID, however, point out to everyone that you were hurt that I thought the anon was you.

I'm more curious to learn when, exactly, "Black" went out of style. Poole and I had an interesting discussion once on his forum regarding how kids tended to describe folks by the crayon colors. Outside of James [who works at the gas-station and is an immigrant from Kenya], I know few people I'd consider black. I also know few people I'd consider white. My kids always thought of themselves as "peach." By the end of summer, I'd consider myself dark brown [maybe because I don't remember all the colors in the big crayon box.]

What's the latest term?

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 11, 2001.

Anita,

I didn't get an email,if I would have I wouldn't have felt to respond in such a manner.If I had,I would have privately mailed you back and I would have dropped it,but just saying that I had emailed ya and that I was hurt over it did not address the root of the problem.I did not require a public apology,just the acknowlegement from a friend that they truly believed in me as a person.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), May 11, 2001.

Well, hell [which is how I started the E-mail response, too.] I did the REPLY thing. Is my server such a piece of shit that I can't count on replies to be sent? That was a few days ago. I'll forward it to ya.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 11, 2001.

For what it's worth capn, I never thought you would do something like that.

-- helen (h@l.p), May 11, 2001.

What's the latest term?

I guess it depends on who you're talking to at the time, Anita. I'm told of an elected official here (city council?) who raises holy hell in public meetings whenever she or any other "Black" is referred to as "African American".

-- CD (costavike@hotmail.com), May 11, 2001.

Anita,

I'll take your word for it,no problem.

Helen,

Thanks hon,I appreciate that.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), May 11, 2001.

Capn: I forwarded it to the same "Common Man" deal from which your original came...I think it's Capnfun at excite.com. You're in my directory, so the problem is either with MY server or YOURS.

CD: The whole thing [in OUR minds...OUR referring to SO, myself, and our respective families] gets pretty silly and too damn hard to keep track. MY folks are Norwegian-Americans. They came from Norway and BECAME Americans. *I*'m just an offspring of them. When SO and I do the heritage thing, he can't follow it beyond his grandfather, who was a white American. When I ask about the others, he can only say, "I don't know...probably slaves." He has NO idea from where they might have come. They could have come from any number of countries containing people with darker skin. There's the heritage LOST thing going on.

We try and go along with whatever society is saying. Since society still considers someone with 1/12th of their blood black in nature, we call him black. It doesn't matter that he isn't black. It doesn't even matter whether or not his heritage lays in Africa or Haiti, or one of the many other countries that have folks with more melanin. It's a simple one-word description that I thought [and HE thought] everyone understood.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 11, 2001.

The only thing you're guilty of is appalling grammar, Lars.

-- (spell@czecher.me), May 12, 2001.

My grammar is not appalling. She is a saucy, lively 88 year old former Boop Boop Dee Doo Girl from the U of Illinois, 1927

-- (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 12, 2001.