Black People Make Me Nervous

Ochre - Image via Wikipedia

As do white people, yellow people, red people and sometimes even ochre people, a thought that arises in the aftermath of the Gates arrest and Obama's hope for a "teachable moment."

Moreover, powerful people make me nervous as do fat people, ugly people, beautiful people, people with body odor, well-dressed people, really smart people, really dumb people, people who seem to be a bizarre amalgam of smart and stupid, people with white even teeth, people with no teeth and people who cover their teeth with their hands when they talk.

Indeed, I make myself nervous. I'm not all that comfortable being alone. Beer with the President? I'd wet myself. Confrontation with a white cop? I wet myself writing that sentence.

So, here's the baseline.:

* Zero degree of anxiety is a state I've never attained.
* One degree of anxiety. With my wife. She's very nice.
* Two degrees of anxiety. With myself, all alone, with the buzzing in my ears and the sudden movement at the corners of my field of vision.
* Seventy-three to eleventy hundred degrees of anxiety. Pretty much everybody else.

Here hyperbole shades into truth: It's degree of anxiety and management of anxiety that matters. So many degrees of overlay determine the final number. Is race/ethnicity a factor in this and do I need to be aware of my own semi-conscious prejudice? Damn well better. Autopilot, the unquestioned premise, is a dangerous thing.

But it's not simple, and I'm a teachable guy. As the President said, it really is all about calibrating the truth of the moment, not ignoring it.

Addendum: It's brown ochre, also known as Goethite.

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Something I Want to Read Again Later

So I'll link to Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake talking about how difficult it is to make sure the contest between Clinton and Obama does not turn toxic as partisans try to tease out the difference between what we might call hurtful but unintended "racism/sexism" (its uncertain nature indicated by those quote marks) and cleverly constructed and carefully aimed Sexism/Racism (the pernicious thrust of it indicated by those loud capital letters).

What she says strikes me as smart and necessary. But sometimes you want to read something again later to make sure, so I park it here.

She concludes:

I don't know how to repair the situation other than to acknowledge that people's feelings are legitimate with regard to what they hear no matter the intent, and presuming malicious intent is a great way to make an enemy of someone who probably really wants to be an ally.

Easier to say than to do but disastrous not to try to do.