" I had a customer on my line today. He walks up and says, "Hey baby girl." I say hi, and he continues with, "Do you hear that a lot?" I say no, but obviously it was a rhetorical question, because he responds with, "That's what all the 'brothas' say, right?"
It's safe to guess what this man's race was. He was an older white man in his probably late 50's, early 60's, and he thought he was so cool. In my attempts to remain civil after the first rude comment, I continue to ring him up. Darline comes to take my place so I can go into my Green Mission meeting, and he starts again. "Oh, here comes your replacement - so you can go home and take care of the kids. They're another job, aren't they?" I look up at him and I retort, "I don't have any, sir - so I wouldn't know." The Icing on the Cake?
"Oh, I bet by the time I come back, you'll have a couple bambinos running around."
Excuse me?
It took everything in my being to take my till and not throw it at his head. Is that what all of us black people are to you? You don't even know me! I practice celibacy, but it's not his business to know that. My FIANCE - not my baby daddy - and I are waiting to have a child until we are legally married. I am a full-time college student, who has always been an intelligent person. I don't need some probably rich jerk to walk up to me and start making assumptions. It was unwarranted, and down right disgusting.
Because I have class (and I was on the clock), I didn't proceed to verbally rip him a new one. My mother raised me to be smart - I'm not going to jeprodize my employment to entertain this man. Please believe, though - if I were shopping and not working, he would have gotten the tongue lashing that he deserved.
What he fails to understand, obviously, is that his racial species (they are a class of their own) have their set of black sheep we like to call - white trash. In his dingy white tee shirt, and snug fit jeans, he fit the description of one - stereotypically. I don't walk around asking his friends which trailor park they live in, or which one of their illegitimate children will they be avoiding today -or which one of his sisters that child came from. That is because I know everyone is not this way, and I would be an ignorant fool to assume otherwise. I couldn't let him see that he ruffled my feathers, but he truly pissed me off.
There are a largely growing majority of us black young-adults who aspire to do great things with our lives. Just because I am a cashier doesn't mean that I am working to support my out-of-wedlock family. It means that I chose not to mooch off my parents for the duration of my college career, and I have things of my own. I have money in my savings and checking accounts, I only own one credit card, and I have good enough credit to get my own apartment, and lease a brand new vehicle (which I have responsibly chosen not to do). He will never delve that far into my life, however - so he will never know that. He is perfectly content with trotting off back into his little world, ready to spew the next stereotype at whichever one of us minorities crosses his path next.
It is up to us as black people, or brown, purple or otherwise - to prove these people wrong. It is up to us as the Colin Powells, the Barrack Obamas, the Shirley Chisolms, the Condoleeza Rices - to become such powerful people that moral idiots like this man have no choice but to respect us. Instead of beating the crap out of him (like I wanted to), I will wait for his deaf grandchild to come for treatment in my hearing clinic in the next ten years. I will wait for him to need physical therapy for that new hip and head to Louis for assistance. I will watch as his wife gets her makeup done at Jheanell's spa. It's going to happen.
And my bambinos' college funds will all be paid for."
Some people are lucky I have home training. I refuse to perpetuate the stereotypes, though.
You're better than me. Not by refraining from ripping him a new one, though.
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