Can We Cool It With the Racism, Please?
I was called the n-word on Saturday.
Here’s a picture of me in case any of you forgot my melanin levels.
And that was only the second biggest display of racism for the weekend. I should mention that the person who called me the n-word was a 6-foot-5 hillbilly with a mullet and an overbite, cowboy boots and denim jeans, but I don’t want to get too much into stereotypes. He was in a group of three who needed masks. We supplied them and they sat down. Ordered one Bud Light between the three of them and then tried to move from their outdoor table to lean on the bar.
Again, they only bought the one beer. A communal Bud Light. Nothing like a little Hepatitis in the age of Coronavirus.
As they headed out, disappointed they couldn't mix and mingle at the bar, the Trump 2020 hatted one also tried to bring the beer with them, which is still a no-no. I relented and let him finish it. Meanwhile, the big one tried to put his mask on while holding a cigarette he was just about done with. The mask broke. It was entirely his fault. He asked for a new one.
I asked them for another dollar (the mask cost mixed with human error for it breaking) and then he called me the n-word. Hard R. He definitely had some practice saying it in crowds.
The first racist was an enemy within. That is, he was already a customer and the racism blossomed into a full-bore breakdown that would make Howard Hughes blush.
He was a self-proclaimed racist, although the way he framed it was quite off-putting, generalizing that all bald, white men were also racist. He went up to several black patrons and screamed at them about Black Lives Matter and what made him a racist. I should point out that the discussion he was having with his friends was fairly calm up until a certain point. We still have no idea what really set him off.
But he went off.
For a while.
Not only did his tirade cause him to be thrown out, he wouldn’t leave! His party left, albeit for one friend who stayed to calm him down. It didn’t work.
In between trading barbs with the staff outside, he wouldn’t stop talking. Every sentence dug a deeper hole. Anti-black, anti-brown, anti-gay, you name it, he was coming out against it.
It got to the point where he was refusing to leave, so I went up to him (up to six feet) and squared up.
“I don’t wanna fight you. I wanna fight him,” he says, pointing to Panama, the POC bar back who kicked him out.
It was a slow night so we closed up shop early. Our Friday racist worked himself out of the bar by 11:30 p.m. but he was still fighting with his friend on the block when we went home at 2 a.m. I don’t know about you, but that feels like a long time to still be upset that people weren’t keen on your brand of racism.
