Some of My Best Friends Are...

“Some of my best friends are ______________.”

People, right? Because anything else shows just a tinge of bias. In a world of staggering diversifying perspectives, it baffles me as to why some people still use this sentence as a crutch to defend their prejudices. Perhaps this is to make racists and homophobes feel good about having that one (or two – three is too many) friend of a different race, faith, sexual orientation or whatever fits in the blank space above the underline.

Someone find me a Shutterstock photo of hands together in an attempt at diversity, and this is what you'll typically see. 

I’ve heard that sentence for years – and I can name several folks who have thrown my name in the mix as if I were the only black person they know or ever befriended. While it is generally known that I am an affable man of above-average intelligence and an accommodating nature, I still hear the dog whistle every time those words come out symbolizing someone is about to say some really racist shit and do not want me to be offended. Well, just don’t say it. Lose the bigotry from your lexicon; it isn’t that hard. Moreover, being placed in that neat little box where “my emergency Negro” is kept when things hit the fan simply confirms this post.

Sidebar:  My best friend is white – he was also my college roommate at Henderson – well, Whispering Oaks anyway. Heath and his family are a major reason why I had no problem moving to Saline County way back in 2009; cheaper rent to live outside of Little Rock was definitely a bonus and that morning commute from Conway is a nightmare regardless of how many lanes are added to Interstate 40. However, we are brothers from different mothers as I am nine weeks older and have more in common than most people within black Arkansas. Can you not tell the family resemblance?

From left to right:  Audri, Heath, Melody, Caeli

Why have I started blogging so much about race lately?

Look, man, I’m in it to kick down doors and with the demonizing of my people by the politicians, talking heads, and judgmental social media reporters, someone has to bust out of the comfort zone that we have spent so much time cultivating and live life on his terms. Contrary to what a certain presidential candidate said recently, being black is the toughest job in America hands-down. I say this because if it false then why do people get in a tizzy over rectifying hundreds of years of sins such as theft, pillaging, murders, rapes, and the like? When we come to take advantage of opportunities, we have to work twice as hard for half the respect and a fraction of the monetary rewards in the face of covert opposition and a rising tide toward outright hatred. 

Other sayings by goodhearted racists that bother me are below. Their logic is simply tragic particularly those who ate up black culture in their teens and early twenties:

“You’re not like those people.”

Tell me, what do you mean by those people? Do you mean my brothers and sisters? Is it something that explicitly spells my differences with some of the images you see on TV or the few black people you have ever known by name?

“I don’t see color, only you as a person.”

It sounds noble and I appreciate your attempt at humblebragging, but if you cannot see a black man with a baritone voice and medium-sized afro, then you’re simply dismissing me. You may also need some stronger eyeglasses because I’m pretty freakin’ far from Casper the Friendly Ghost. Even when my crew from high school jokingly labeled me as the “whitest black man they know,” the reality is still I am black – and back home, the skin matters a LOT more than it should at this point.

“We cannot be proud of our heritage! The rebel flag is my heritage, not hate!”

I call BS all day long. Do the research on the man who designed the Stars and Bars and his own words promote white supremacy during the Civil War and thereafter. Also, the proliferation of said flags was in response to school integration throughout the South during the Civil Rights Movement. You may still harbor love for a symbol (most conservative people gravitate to these gods than not), but to me, this still construes intimidation.

“They don’t want to work for anything, they are lazy, they shouldn’t get anything for free.”

This has been said about black people since the end of slavery when we were no longer forced to work for free [prison labor is a different story and the continued evolution of slavery in addition to the felony mark placed up on ex-inmates when they return to the free world limiting their opportunities to prove they are fully rehabilitated. More on that in the future]. If we are so lazy, explain how we were denied the opportunities to own our patented inventions post-Reconstruction as they made landowners and industrialists obscene profits that built the United States of America or being stolen from our ancestral homeland to a strange location stripped our any vestiges of home with our religions replaced by Christianity as a method of control. Who limited our mobility through redlining, structural and institutional racism alike, and sundown towns as if we were a pox destroying property values and families at will? In addition, who had to delay schooling to work in the fields for the landowning farmers for pennies on the dollar and live in a perpetual cycle of debt, hopelessness, and death threats for taking a moral stand?

I’m waiting.

I’ve not even brought up reparations.

“Life was so much better for you people during segregation. They had jobs and were able to build homes. Ask them!”

First of all, you people would get you a black eye if not worse. Older black people – my parents, living grandparents, etc. had endured through Jim Crow, and if it had not been for their sacrifices, then we would still live in a blatant discriminatory climate. It is agreed that they had jobs and in most cases were able to establish homes, yet those relatively paltry jobs paid peanuts and were subject to the whims of management. Even if we were able to build and purchase homes, they were often across the tracks in a less desirable area and subject to higher interest rates. Wealth building was made more difficult due to the racist manner of how property was valued. If you don’t believe me, check out Zillow or the appraisal maps from the county collector’s office one day.

By invoking “some of my best friends are ________________”, we limit the people in our world to just one thing or another subconsciously perpetuating any privileges inherited real or perceived.