What about you now, are you prejudiced?
“What about you now, are you prejudiced?”
In my final year high school it was the first year of integration. The courts ordered instantaneous integration. The government’s solution was to close a brand-new school in a black neighborhood that had carpets and air-conditioning and bus the entire black population, one hour each way, to our school, which had no air-conditioning, and we were put on double sessions. The blacks were spring-loaded in the pissed-off condition. There were riots, two murders, a couple of slashings, including a white girl whose ambition was to be a fashion model. I was knocked completely unconscious twice in what is now called the knockout game.
As a result, I am warry around any black I don’t know. I have observed that white people do not engage in the knockout game, but it is a rite of passage for many blacks. I got along well with blacks in the work environment but realize their work persona may be wildly different from their not-at-work persona. Over a thirty-plus year working career I’ve had one close black friend. But over the same period, I’ve only had a handful of close white friends and only two I am still in contact with.
Prejudice is necessary to survival. If we had to develop a new set of rules for every type of encounter, we’d be dead in short order. Am I warry, yes. But if someone offers an interaction then I will take it at face value unless or until something warns me off.
Blacks frequently complain that they are arrested for drugs more frequently than whites and this is prejudice. (Forget that yes, they do have drugs. Their complaint is that they get arrested more than whites who are generally in the majority, and this is prejudice.) I have a rental house in a predominantly black neighborhood. While working on it there was a black boy on a banana seat half-size bike...so, pretty young. He yelled down the street to a family of five whites walking along, “Hey! ‘Y’all want to buy pot. Just got a big load!” (They were about 100 feet away, so he was loud enough to be heard.) “Well, ‘y’all see me around. Just stop me anytime.”
A nicely dressed adult black stopped to talk to the neighbor in the house across the street. The neighbor is a really nice black...a former air force sergeant. I glanced over and stopped dead. The body language from the sergeant put me on guard. After a bit the man waved goodby and got back into his Cadillac and drove off. I went over and said, “Cephus, what the heck was that about?” He said, “That flucking (n-word) tried to sell me coke.” I said, “Do you know him?” He said, “Fluck no I don’t know him.” So, it’s clearly prejudiced that blacks are arrested more than whites.
To answer your question, I won’t go out of my way to befriend blacks because there may or may not be a lot of baggage in any relationship that I have no control over. But if there’s an opportunity for a good relationship with anyone, I won’t tun it down. I’ve had zero problems with my many black tenants and lots of problems with some of the white ones. I am, however, certainly going to be more warry around blacks than whites in any similar situation. So, yes.