Possum / Whiskey / Spaniards.

The other day when I was biking back from campus in the evening, there was something in the street ahead that looked like a cat, so I swerved my bike to aim at it to make it run real fast out of the road, but it turned out to be a possum, and it just kind of ambled a bit faster, and I had to re-direct my bike away from it so I wouldn't hit it.

Later that night, when I was at the student bar, the older (white) bartender who's kind of gruff found out that my exams were over, and gave me free my first cheap whiskey on the rocks.

Later on, the Spaniards were there, and the one Spaniard who studies Romance lit was bitching about how when you call up the campus Safe Ride (=the door-to-door after-hours shuttle for people who don't feel comfortable walking at night), one operator is nice, but the other (black) (male) operator is a dick, and I had to break it to him that if I was the operator and I heard a male voice on the other end asking for a four-block ride along major streets, I would think he was lazy and a pussy, and be gruff too.

That brought out a story from the Catalan about how he had a (black) (male) cashier at the one cafeteria on campus be like, "Please put the money in my hand," when he had first laid the money on the counter because his hands was full with pizza and his wallet and whatnot, and how that type of behavior in a cashier is bad, and how American blacks are all full of attitude. I tried to explain to him that the 4 out of 5 people who do that usually do it as a conscious or unconscious racist thing and that it probably doesn't happen to white cashiers nearly as much, and that the guy was so used to sticking up for himself that he didn't take a second to evaluate the situation and realize that it had only happened because his hands were full.

Anyhow, no matter how I tried to explain, he just didn't get it, and said that he wasn't a racist, and that black people could be just as bad racists too, and that he treats everyone equally and that in the Spanish context you complain about bad service no matter who's giving it. I said that he was right about (black) on (white) racisim in some select instances, but that that didn't apply to this situation, and that years ago at a conference in D.C. a (black) woman at the coffee cart had told me the same thing, and next day when I was in the same line I noticed it happening to her a lot (and I lied, too, and said that it didn't happen to the [white] cashier at the next cart in the same conference building foyer; there was no other coffee cart), and since then I've changed my behavior and been very particular to put money directly into the hands of (black) cashiers, and that he should separate out intent and perception, and recognize this as a consciousness-raising moment and go from there.

At some point, too, I told him that being the demanding non-(black) person to a (black) person in a service industry job has huge racial overtones, and though sometimes complaints are justified, he should be careful into coming off like someone yelling "Jump!" with the expectations that a (black) person will ask "How high?", but he didn't understand that either, even when I explained how when I saw "This is It" at the all (black) theater the other week the (black) audience clapped and cheered when in the documentary the (white) producer who fronted money for the show was extremely deferential to Michael, because (in my interpretation) it reverses the usual situation ... In response, he said something to the effect that service from many (black)s he's encountered has been shitty and lazy.

Overall, though, he wouldn't hear any of it it, though, at all, and said at some point that he didn't like it either when he went into the black neighborhood bar and everyone looked at him...

I still don't know how to have handled the situation better - maybe to ask him straight off how he imagines the situation to have looked from the (black) cashier's point-of-view?