buster

monday, one of the only managers in my department was leaving for the day and came to see me. he asked if i would keep an eye on some of the newbies hired recently and make sure they were doing their job. he told me that if any of them were screwing around, i was to tell them to get back to work and then let him know.

i gave a phony smile and said that i would.

yeah right. i'm not like that. i have no desire to be one of those employees. plus i'm not getting paid for that. there are already employees like that at my job who would have been happy to do the duty, but they weren't there that day. i like being friends with everyone at work. it would feel awkard telling my peers to 'get back to work'.

and then i started thinking about how at every job that i've ever had, there's always been a buster. someone who you could count on to run and tell the management if you're slacking, tardy, or screwing around.

the funny thing is, those employees were never black. always white. i've been a favored employee but that's where i draw the line. i've never known black employees to be the ones stepping on others to (try to) get ahead. and i'm not condoning screwing around at work, or not letting someone know when another employee's behavior is seriously affecting your job. i'm just talking about snitching for the sake of snitching. snitching because you just can, when it's not really your business. and i've known plenty more white people who've made others' secular life a lot harder than black employees have. it's just what i've noticed.

i'm not sure if not being a buster is a black thing, or if being a buster is kind of a white thing. i guess it works for them. but i don't think if /when black people do that, they'd have the same results or advantage.

comparisons

the husband and i were invited over to his co-worker's home for dinner. our kids also used to go to school together. as far as the dinner was concerned, it was something i could take or leave. we have a pretty big social group already, and it's really not that important to me that our son play with their kid or not. but i was motivated to go mainly because i'm curious about people and i wanted to check out where they lived, how nice (or not) their house was, and just how they live in general. i think i was more curious about that than than being invited for dinner. and i have a tendency to take a look at someone and prematurely decide what type of house they probably live in and what type of life they lead. so it's kind of a little game i play with myself to see how wrong or right i was once we get there.

i feel like i need to see how other people live in order to be content with our life, our house, our financial situation. i feel like everyone has more money than we do, but at the same time i suspect our finacial situation appears different to others what it it really is. and i realized that of all our close friends that the husband and i hang out with, i've subconsciously managed to only keep friends that (that i perceive are on )our on our same (perceived) level of housing, finance, education, or LESS. like, i feel okay when i know that i have more of or the same things materially or financially as my friends. but i think i'd be too envious to have close friends that do better than us financially. like, i don't think my ego could handle it.

so, i was waaay wrong about these people. they have a much nicer house/home than what i expected. it didn't phase me, though, because it's a lot like our house. you'd think by now i'd have learned not to judge a book by it's cover. i think maybe that's a personality flaw because i do it all the time. but doesn't everyone?

"facts"

friday i went to see an opthamologist at the Casey Eye institute (which by the way is a great place). i have this mild eye condition so i was discussing that with the doctor. he says, "yeah.... for some reason it's really common among blacks". i don't know why the way he said "blacks" instead of "black people" sounded so offensive to me. but it just did. i guess it sounded so formal, like just by him saying "BLACKS" i could tell that he didn't have any black friends. totally.

but how did he know that? is that just some random fact he had been told? some statistic he was told about?

i always cringe when someone on the news says things like these:

"african americans are at high risk for high blood pressure"

"african american women are the highest at risk for HIV"

"african americans are at high risk for diabetes".

i hear that kind of so-called information a lot. and there is never any specific study given or date or by whom it was conducted. the media just tells us all this and we're supposed to go, "oh. okay. that must be true and factual because the news says that some study somewhere was conducted".

are those "studies" accurate? how did they test every single black american to know that we're at high risk for this or that? is it determined by the percentage of black american with insurance that actually go to the doctor? what percentage of black people is that? and i'm not saying that it's not true that black people are at risk for this or that. i'm just saying that there is such a thing called propaganda and you shouldn't just make a statement without providing details.

i actually can't recall someone reporting that whites are at risk for this or that. can you recall it? i always hear about the minorities that are at risk for this or that.


hmmm. white people must be pretty darn healthy and black people must not be.

therapeutic

i don't know why i'm getting bashed so much on this blog. people act like it's a cardinal sin to state my feelings- like the post about the tipping. what's so wrong about saying that i don't LIKE tipping? the fact of the matter was that i DID tip. i don't like paying taxes either, but i do. regardless of all the thoughts in my head that led up to me deciding to leave a tip, i did the right thing.

but who doesn't ever think something less than favorable before acting or saying the opposite? you're lying if you say that you don't. yet when i write what i feel, and not necessarily what i actually did, i get reamed.

i'm past that though. that's why i started this blog in the first place. everyone writes for their readers. everyone puts on the comfortable, ideal, shiny side of themselves into their blog and leaves out the ugly. nobody wants to showcase the ugly and risk people thinking knowing they're not perfect or that they don't always think happy thoughts about everyone else.

the upside of this all is how therapeutic writing and getting responses is. of course any blog can get responses. but with regard to race in particular, the responses and emails are amazing usually and let me know i'm not the only one with my feelings...

motivations

i don't always do things with the purest motives sometimes. the husband and i received a gift certificate from someone we did business with for a restaurant we had never been to, Saylers Old country kitchen. since it's not a restaurant we had heard much about, we thought we'd save it for when we were really broke.

so this past weekend, we were pretty broke. i looked at their online menu and decided that maybe it wasn't that bad of a restaurant. we spent 50 dollars on dinner which the gift certificate covered. as i said, we were pretty broke and it would have been a totally FREE meal except for then we had to leave a tip. or did we? of course we had to. the husband didn't think much tip was necessary. he doesn't care what anyone thinks.

at this point, it was (to me) only about what people think, since i didn't really care about paying the server's salary. she was a good server and all, no complaints here, but it's not like she buttered my french bread for me.

i determined that our tip should be about 10 bucks. we could afford that. but i just didn't really want to. i don't believe in paying the salary of someone i don't know for work that they choose to get paid hourly to do, especially when they don't exceed my expectations tipping so much.

my ONLY motivator for leaving a good tip was the fact that we are an interracial couple and she probably expected us to NOT leave a tip. i was only trying to make it easier for the next black or interracial couple. other than that, if i had been white, i probably wouldn't have tipped or maybe just not so much.

full moon

i went to the lloyd center mall last night. i'm not a mall rat but i wanted to get out without the kids and shop for some clothes. when i got home, i wondered if i had been "punk'd". three situations happened within one hour that all involved strange black men. i thought about writing about how it only validates what white people think about black men, but no, i'm not going to go there right now. and then it dawned on me. everytime something really weird happens to me , i always ask (to noone in particular): is it a full moon or something? turned out last night really was.

this is the weirdest thing that has happened to me in a looong time. have you ever seen dave chappelle portray the crackhead? okay now picture a black man, on that level who came up to me at the mall and and asked:

" 'xcuse me sista, sista... i was wonderin' if you could help me....(holding a tablet with some letters on it), i was wonderin' if you could help me spell the word biscuit. do you know how to spell that word? can you tell me how to spell it?"

i looked at him like he was a mental case, and almost helped him. but then i thought that a) he probably knew how to spell biscuit,b) didn't really need to know how to spell biscuit, or c) was trying to pick me up or play some silly game.

i hesitated, and then said, "no. i don't know how to spell biscuit" and turned and kept walking.

then, i went into Forever21. there was a white girl there being "harassed" by a twenty-something black guy trying to pick her up. she was doing her best to ignore him but he was so in-her-face with it. saying things like "can i get your phone number girl?....well why not? come on girl.....if i had a hundred dollar bill, would you write your number on it?...." it went on and on. the white girl was trying to act annoyed but the fact that she stayed there smiling while she told him NO told me she thought it was cute on some level.

i was so irritated. within 10 minutes i had had two experiences with black men that were not positive. i gave him a dirty look, as if to say, look at you. you're the reason black men can't get rid of the stigma. what is wrong with you? does this look like a nightclub? you idiot. i rolled my eyes and walked the other way. then he started calling to me, asking why i was 'treatin' him like that, why did i need to roll my eyes'. he didn't have a clue. i was offended that i am forced to share the same race with an idiot like that. i know he doesn't really represent the entire black race but he basically put on a show for the entire store, i wonder if the next time someone in there encounters someone black would they automatically mentally put that person into a category with him?

then i went to the food court. i was ready to go home but i stopped to get something to eat for me and the husband. i went to the cajun grille and got in line. the black man in front of me was having some kind of difficult understanding the two asian men there. the asian men kept repeating themselves and sighing and rolling their eyes that this man couldn't understand what they were saying. it got kind of uncomfortable. and the black man kept turning around to look at me as if he expected me to nod or give a look that i understood his frustration. i was indifferent.

what was so weird was that other than these three experiences, i didn't have any type of converstion or interaction with anyone.

i've always said that i married a white man because i'm just more attracted to white men. but honestly, i don't think i'd have the strength to be married to a black man. black men put up with such bullshit, and the ones that really are decent and wealthy and educated still have it rough to some extent. i think it would be really hard to be the wife of a black man.