why you all up in my kool-aid
Already : Hatachi Archives
why you all up in my kool-aid Sunday August 8
last night i was bartending for nigel, another stylist katrina, and alex. katrina, a 30-year-old black mother of three, told me at one point that i am about the whitest boy she's met in a long time.
i believe the exact circumstance was my bungling of the not-so-white phrase: "why you all up in my kool-aid when you don't know the flav(a)/(or)"
and i got realllllly upset.
unfortunately, i was behind the bar, and getting upset at customers is never a good tactic. nigel was laughing and so was alex, so i figured there was one of three things happening: (a) i was totally out of line to be upset by the comment, and thus i should bear it, put a smile on, and go back to work; (b) what she was saying was totally inappropriate, and i should bear it, put a smile on, and go back to work; or (c) some combination of both. however, both have the same reaction on my part, so that's what i tried my best to do.
when i thought about it ten minutes later, i came to the conclusion that it was indeed (c). where i come from, being a white boy isn't a good thing, and it certainly isn't a compliment (as she had assured me it wasn't a bad thing). being a "white boy" to me, a product of northern illinois, is being not only caucasian but being culturally ignorant, insensitive, and, for lack of better terminology, hick-ish.
and as soon as i thought of it that way, i saw why i was so upset. i just described the "good ol' boy" stereotype that is, stereotypically, still rather a racist, ignorant individual. inside my head, the neurons fired in such a way that when she said "white boy", all of these connections fired that conjured up images of racism and seperatism. thus, without even understanding why i was instantly angry, i was.
of course, i realize that katrina wasn't calling me a racist good ol' boy. she was simply defining me by my external characteristics of manner and speech. for the sake of a joke, that's fine; "i am white" in the sense that i can't dance. i can't play basketball. i can't jump.
in many ways, of course, the thinking of country bumpkins is decidely backwards when compared to the thinking of a new york city lifelong resident. what bothered me after the initial anger, though, was that katrina and nigel were unable to understand why i was upset at all: and they didn't care. from the city perspective, where they grew up around different people all the time, and racism was less of a concern (at least, overt racism), they didn't understand why i was upset.
what kept me upset, though, was not that -- it was that they made no effort to understand where i was coming from. they didn't want to listen to the explanation that i just gave here, and they didn't want to reach a mutual understanding that makes everyone better able to understand each other in the future.
they just wanted to laugh, have a good time, and make a joke. at my expense. certainly, i would have never brought this point to their attention: it would have made me feel childish; they certainly would have turned that same statement back on me.
people are terrible to one another, and the sad part is that they are rarely aware of it. it goes with the turf of being human. who have i wronged recently, i wonder?
