X-amination #1: Casual & Unintended Racism
Posted by Jonny X on October 04, 2006

Do you suppose an Indian guy gets really upset if you call him “chief”? This is not to say that you notice he’s Indian, but like if you’re in a mall, and you come up behind him and say,

“Hey chief, do you know what time it is?”

Do you suppose he’s like, “Why would you call me chief? Is it because I’m NATIVE AMERICAN, you racist fuck?! It’s not enough you thrust your Christian religion and your syphilis and smallpox on us 400 years ago, then trivialize the entire thing by making cartoon versions of us mascots for your sports teams, but you have the guile to call me chief like it’s no big deal?! You and your Dockers can eat shit, you white devil!”

The only reason I bring this up is because I was in a 7-11 parking lot yesterday and a gentleman made a big ol’ reverse turn in the parking lot – like, WAY wider than he needed for the space available – to get out of the area. So I noticed this ridiculous radius and said to myself, “Whoa, you got enough room there, chief?” I then looked closer, and sure enough, he was probably an Indian. The above paragraph is the dialogue that ensued in my head after I said that. I have a diseased imagination…

However, upon further reflection I realize that this sort of thing actually happened to some friends of mine. A few years ago – junior year of college, if I recall correctly - my roommates and I found ourselves on a typical Friday night. Plenty of booze (40s of Original Coors on this night, I believe), sexual frustration aplenty, and a growing collection of cars in front of our house.

So we decide in our half-drunk state to follow the next people who park on our street to whatever party they’re going to. Anyone who’s lived in a college town for any length of time is familiar with this practice where you just show up and try to scam free beer from the morons dumb enough to throw an open party. Invariably, the nervous roommate – who didn’t want this party in the first place, mind you – will come up to you and say, “Who do you know here?” It’s like he’s fucking Columbo or something and worried that you’re going to steal his DVD box set of The Shield. The appropriate response to this accusatory inquiry is always, “Hey, is that guy peeing on your coffee table?” When he turns to look, you just walk in the other direction blending back into the crowd before he can locate you again. That way, you don’t get bothered anymore, his Shield DVDs are safe, and he spends the rest of the night worried about his coffee table. You win!

Anyway, we show up at this house and it’s a typical college house. There’s no furniture in the living room, only a foosball table. Swarths of American Eagle-clad guys, and Express-clad chicks congest every room. It appears that the last time the carpets were cleaned was circa The Bicentennial. Belushi is on the wall drinking Jack Dizzle. And in the middle of it all, some poor, self-esteem vacant, mildly attractive chick dances on the kitchen table topless.

Before we go any further, a word of explanation about my roommates... We were all right around the age of 21 at this point, all white, and all from comfortable suburban backgrounds. We were all dorks in our own way (varying in levels of dorkness ranging from “Majors in Engineering” to “Beta Tests Games on the Internet” to “Writes for 7th recapping Monday Night Raw” *ahem*), we were all easy enough on the eyes, and we were all pretty goddamned funny. There was one important thing that separated me from them: I was the only one not carrying around my V-Card.

Yep, five guys living in a house and only one has visited the holiest of holies.

Needless to say, they were a bit pent up. So, we show up at this party and there’s pussy everywhere. It’s not like your typical sausagefest where there’s like 6 guys sitting around playing Asshole listening to Tenacious D in furniture that probably came out of Anne Frank’s attic. No, this was like a college party you see in a movie. There’s dancing, there’s people carrying around a wide variety of drinks, and there’s TONS of women. I happened to bump into a chick from my creative writing class whom I was trying to bang at the time (FYI: It didn’t happen), so I was set for the night.

My roommates, however, went down, and did so in gloriously tragic fashion. One of them approached one girl and tried all the standard pickup lines: “What’s your major?”; “Where you from?”; “Nice tits”; etc. She shot every last one of them down with the response tacked on, “Nope. Cliché, try again.” So finally, he gets so frustrated by this that he finally just blurts out, “Uhhh, ok. Do you like mayonnaise?” She goes, “There you go. That’s better,” and shares her thoughts on mayo.

It occurs to me now that this conversation would have worked on a couple of levels had it occurred in the early 80s since it could easily transition into a discussion of An Officer and a Gentleman.

You wanna fight me, MayoNNAISE?!

However, since it was 2003, chances are excellent NO ONE is thinking about this movie.

Regardless, this would have been all fine and dandy, since he inevitably scored the conversation, had another dumber (and much drunker) roommate not intervened and made fun of his line. Obnoxious roommate (and no, their names are not important here… In fact, as an exercise for the reader, insert your own friends’ names here for fun. Chances are, your friends are at least just as stupid as this. Make it more personal for yourself!) began laughing like a maniac at which point mayonnaise girl got frustrated and found someone better looking who was probably wearing a white hat and cornflower blue shirt. Subsequently, the mayonnaise line has achieved something of a folk hero status in our group just for its absurdity. All pickup lines are now measured against this standard.

Even better than this was the effort of a third roommate. After an extremely unsuccessful night with the ladies, this poor bastard found himself all alone sitting against the wall in the living room with only the foosball table as company. Obnoxious roommate goes up to console him and learns that Lonely roommate has struck out with every girl at the party. Considering how drunk everyone was and just HOW MANY women there were, that’s some damned impressive failure.
Obnoxious roommate then proceeds to play the good buddy and list all of Lonely roommate’s good qualities. The one he chooses as Lonely roommate’s BEST quality though… his knowledge of kung fu.

I sense that many of you know where this is going…

He plays up being a black belt in tae-kwon-do as an incredibly desirable characteristic in a guy, and one that every chick would be impressed by. Now, I may not have unlocked the secrets to a woman’s psyche, but I think I can say with some degree of certainty what women generally look for. Typically tops on the list are things like good looks, charm, sense of humor, financial security, and very little backhair. Never in my life have I heard a woman say, “Rick’s got money, a cool car, good looks and a huge cock… I just wish he could snap off a convincing roundhouse kick once in a while.” Maybe I’m just not hanging out in the right places…

Whatever the case, Lonely roommate decides he wants to prove Dumb roommate wrong and goes up to the first chick he sees and says, “Would it impress you if I said I know kung fu?” The chick turns around, Asian as the woman who sells you cigarettes, with a look on her face that would make you get your hand out of the cookie jar. She replies indignantly, “Why? Because I’m ASIAN?! Fuck you!”

Lonely roommate felt even worse, and needless to say, we walked home shortly thereafter. I was about 7 shots in from creative writing chick after my 40s, so I didn’t even hear this story until the next day. At which point, I laughed my balls off and subsequently wasn’t hungover anymore. Laughter truly is the best medicine! I went on a couple of dates with the girl from creative writing and struck out, Mayo guy made a sandwich and became something of a hero, ObnoxiousRoommate slept a lot (he did that in college), and Lonely Roommate spent the next few weeks slowing down our Internet from downloading an absolute shitpile of porn.

The lesson here? I don’t know. I had a point when I originally started this piece, but I got lost in my own narrative and had fun reliving a moment from college. I suppose you could make an argument for being aware of your vernacular, but it’s not like it’ll help. With absolute certainty you’ll probably use the term “Indian giver” in the presence of a Native American, call something “faggy” around one of your gay friends, or make fun of your friends by calling them “Jews” when your yarmulke-wearing neighbor walks by. It’s inescapable. There’s rarely, if ever, any malice associated with these slips, but it’s important not to understate the importance of cultural sensitivity. Political correctness wears thin in a hurry, but if we understand what we say, we can invent more precise terms than include all disingenuous, overly swishy, or cheap people and not attempt to shoehorn them into one cultural subcategory.

That is, unless you’re white. Don’t trust whitey.

Until next time…

Jonny X