Tiny Tim,
Ya ever stand outside on a hot summer day, somewhere where the brush and air is think? You have these pests flying all around you, trying to consume you. They're in your ears, your eyes, your hair, you feel them on your back. Your slaps and swats to defend yourself from these flesh-eaters become mechanized. But there is one in particular, one hungry mosquito who you know is going in for the juicy extraction as your busy with all the other insignificant pests. It waits and seizes a the moment on the back of your deltoid, out of sight and mind as it makes its prized guzzle. And right at the last second, right at the moment it is going to pull out and fly away fattened, clumsily with your blood, you feel it! And then, WHAM! You smack it and lay waste to its carcass as it sits pancaked on your shoulder. You Tiny Tim, are that mosquito and now I will lay waste to your post.
Your story is a tired one. One I've heard in variations, literally HUNDREDS of times. Not with the specifics of course. But with the overall theme being the same (i.e. someone wanting you to consider their race with regard to a certain situation).
What you've demonstrated with your words (and ignorance) is that you have an inability and unwillingness to think of things in racial terms, most specifically to think of your OWN WHITE RACE as exactly that, a race. After all, you did say you didn't care what skin color he was when you did your 20+ years of hiring.
You fail to see that your own life, your managerial/position of leadership (one that is highly prized in any and all societies), is a function of white nepotism, that being your life and the benefits therein have been shaped by your race. On equivalent terms, this unemployed black man's life has been equally shaped by his own race.
What did you both demonstrate in the phone call and you subsequently again in your post? Frustration.
But your frustration is accompanied by something highly corrosive, that being...race obliviousness. You fail to recognize the privileges society confers on yourself because you are white. Your managerial position as a white man in the face of a angry unemployed black man is the ultimate tragic irony.
Conversely, that black man is anything BUT oblivious. He knows full well what race is on the other end of the line and the literal birthright you received right as the exited the womb. You have a special set of built-in societal advantages, which you quickly and proudly take credit for, beating your chest like a gorilla who just subdued a female in his harem. He knows YOU, as the white male, were born into a society that values these golden traits (white and male) so highly, there are significant historical, even biblical references to such a prized birth circumstance for a mother and father. Yes, the white son has a yellow brick road paved directly to Oz. But this Oz is no fake with a little fat bald man perpetuating its fiction. There's wealth, and status, and unending success for all those who jump at the prize. Oh, we are a capitalist society. This white son MUST work. He MUST have skills. He MUST be diligent and ambitious. This is undeniable. But woe to he who states that man of the darker skinned hue has the same opportunity.
Why is this? And why the black frustration on the other end of the phone line. Your caller perhaps emoted greatly in part because he knew, from his earliest moments of rational consciousness, that RACE and HIERARCHY are inextricably interwoven. He knew his position on the bottom of the totem pole was for the most part, unscalable. Oh he could climb somewhat. But the pole is greased at a certain point and viola! he ended up at the bottom once again. All this in the face of an ignorant white male on the other end of phone, again completely oblivious. I respect his rage.
You Tiny Tim, expressed yourself through the individualist ideal, that being, the delusion we are 'captains of our own ships in life'. That is, if your white. But 'white' doesn't exist for you in its truest form. Only achievement does.
What this did is leave you baffled that a black man raised the issue of his race in a job application process. It leaves you blind to comprehend this man's frustration and anger about why blacks may question YOU about the sins of your fathers (fathers you don't even recognize as such in a race related sense). It leaves you blind to the fact this man may have made 30 previous phone calls this month, all to white managers like yourself, beneficiaries of the aforementioned white nepotism, only to be turned down the 31st time in the same....exact manner...
His rush to judgment was harsh but your inability to diffuse the situation was far worse. And your inability stems from your ignorance. Let this post simmer in your mind as your head hits your pillow. Let some clarity sprout up from between your ears. Meditate on these words and engage in independent study about the black circumstance...or else you'll be what you always have been regardless of you age....
a tiny, mentally defective, little prejudiced boy...
::::SMACK!!!:::
:::Flicks the carcass from shoulder:::
)
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