Gas Station Racism (and being shocked by it).

So, I'm a pretty angry guy sometimes.

What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, in my head I go through some daily battles with insulting people. That gets balanced against my conscience, which tells me I'm an idiot. Finally what comes out of my mouth is generally respectful. But that doesn't mean I ever skip the angry part.

If you ever went through a basic psychology course, you probably understand Freud's theory that we have three levels to our consciousness. You've got what's at the base: The Id. The Id is instinctual drives and urges that you can't control. Like me, I get angry at everyone almost right off the bat. Maybe it's the cost of living in a high stress town in a high stress profession.

Then you've got the Superego, which are all the rules culture and society teach you. Think of these like ideals. You'll never perfectly meet them, but they're the standards that get set for you depending on how you were raised. Finally there's the Ego, which satisfies the basic drives of the Id by balancing them against the realistic rules set by the Superego.

So, for instance. I get angry at someone (often for little reason; say they cut me off). I want to get out of my car and start yelling at him for being an idiot. My Superego intervenes and says that type of stupidty could get me locked up. And my Ego, still needing to satisfy my lingering angry urges, turns up some aggressive music for me to rock out to and get my impulses satisfied in a way that does no harm to anyone. According to Freudian theory, people go through this cycle on a daily basis, no exception. We all have some urge we realize isn't appropriate that makes us say to ourselves, "Hey, dumb dumb, quiet down with that nonsense."

Now let me tell you a story about how that Id-Ego-Superego thing can play out in real life. I've talked about this with other people so I know I'm not the only one that does this, but sometimes I'll mentally pick out something about a person's race and use that to insult them. I do that about white people, black people, Hispanic, asian, and on and on. Sometimes that means I'll get angry and think something like, "Asians should learn to speak English." At which point the other parts of my conscience kick in and say, "Hey idiot, your own grandmother didn't speak English." And finally it resolves itself in good social behavior where I try to treat everyone with some respect because, as my thinking mind points out, we're all humans facing our own struggles. 

 

Hell, my entire Facebook wall is a bleeding stream of angry rants against racism and inequality in America. So while I can think a huge jumble of positive and negative things about people based on race, color, creed, sexual orientation, and on, the arc of my behavior has always been on a trajectory of despising inequality and treating people with some human decency. And, much like the Good Book argues, I believe sin starts in the mind and leads to bad actions. So how do you get rid of negative thoughts like the ones I have? Well, meet more people not like yourself. Understand their struggles. Get to know them. This is like, basic kids stuff. They taught you this on G.I. Joe twenty years ago.

That leads us to the gas station incident of yesterday. Now, I've talked before about how I enjoyed writing a black female lead into my book, FLOOR 21 (which is selling quite nicely, thank you). Most of my friends are black, a happy consequence of living in Houston. I've also talked about how I had to drop a friend of mine after showing a picture of my ex-girlfriend to him. He might have been drunk, but when he said, "Oh, you like those n****r girls", that was the end of the friendship. Being my skin color and dressing nicely means I overhear a lot of stuff that's borderline, but when you can't even hide your racism, and don't even want to try, well we don't need to be friends.

And maybe it was me being naive, but I really didn't think talking bad about black people was that persistent. But, apparently, people feel like because I'm white skinned and wear a nice suit I'm the guy you feel comfortable sharing your racism with. And the weird part is, this time it was so subtle, I didn't even realize what had just occurred until I was driving away from the gas station.
Scenario: Me, standing in line behind a black man taking a long time at the counter. He tells his son he won't buy the child a particular candy because at $3.00 it's too expensive for its size. So, the father takes the child into the aisles to find another candy.

Thoughts: Your internal reaction to this could range from inoffensive to highly racist.
You could think
1.) Nothing. Oblivious to the situation.
2.) Man, it's just three bucks. Just pay.
3.) Well, this is a responsible adult teaching his son to choose wisely when buying something.
4.) Black people have no money and this guy shouldn't be here.

I highlight that last option because of what happened next. I've already gone through my rolling number of thoughts. I'm in a rush, annoyed, want this guy to hurry. I've done my, "Don't think negative thoughts because we're all humans who struggle and have priorities and this guy obviously loves his son." So I've put the situation behind me.
The clerk hasn't apparently. After the man walks back into the aisles, he says
Clerk: "This guy."
Me: "What's that now?"
Clerk: "I'm not surprised he didn't have money. Probably shouldn't have been in here. Looks like he's on the wrong side of town."
Me: (Not digesting what I've just been told) "I know right?"
My response was one of those things you do when you're not really sure you've heard a person correctly, or can't really understand what you've been told. So I'm pulling away in my car and thinking to myself, "What did that guy just say? Did he really say the black guy was on the wrong side of town?"

The black man in the store was wearing glasses, a nice pair of slacks and a nicely pressed shirt. Not that you should have to defend a black man's choice of clothing anyway, but this was the least threatening or offensive way a person could have been dressed. But the clerk still thought it was okay to tell me, a white dude, that this black guy was on the wrong side of town.

This goes back tot he Id-Ego-Superego thing. Somewhere along the way in society, a lot of people have apparently had the rules in their Superego programmed in a way that says it's okay to talk bad about black people or insult them. Maybe not with everyone, but this clerk's Superego obviously told him, "Hey, this nice looking white guy's going to appreciate me insulting that black guy in the back who didn't want to spend three dollars on candy."

Candy. He felt it was okay to make this insult over candy. I don't want to know what he would have felt justified doing if the situation had been even a degree worse. Because small thoughts, like that, if left uncontrolled, manifest in words. Words help shape our realities. And then we create environments where it's okay to discriminate against a segment of our society. Everything builds on itself. That's why it's important to keep having discussions and broadening your experiences, so that you get it in your head that those thoughts and actions aren't right.

AS AN ASIDE, now that I'm actually a published author I'll be doing a lot more writing. Probably a lot about race, since I deal with it so much in Houston and because my books revolve around portraying people of different races in science fiction settings. I previously wrote about black heroic leads here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/28/1388577/-My-experience-writing-FLOOR-21-and-African-American-leads-in-Science-Fiction
And my next piece will be on interracial relationships. Until next time this is DAISHI, signing out.

My experience writing FLOOR 21 and African Americans in Science Fiction

Indulge me for a moment while I rattle off a list of titles. Recognize any of them?

Guardians of the Galaxy
Godzilla
Lucy
Divergent
The Hunger Games: Mockingbird
Transformers: The Age of Extinction
The Maze Runner
Robocop
Jupiter Ascending
Ant-Man
Jurassic World
High Rise
Scorch Trials

This is a brief – and brief really is the phrase I must emphasize here – of science fiction films that have been produced from 2014 through 2015. If you bother to take a look at the film posters for these movies, you’ll notice the current trend of advertisement in film: stock poses by the lead protagonists, or demolished wastelands of the apocalypse. However, those are choices made by the advertising team. The creative teams behind these films and writing these stories are the ones choosing to populate the leads with one common thread: white leads.
Is that a problem?

I would never argue that our film and narrative leads haven’t become more diverse, if by diverse we mean that we’re seeing a rise in females. However, even that admission comes with the caveat that leads in these narratives are still overwhelmingly male. That’s an entirely different essay I could write, however today I’m focusing on the African American lead in science fiction. Let me create a new list for you, and I promise this one will be far more brief.
Men In Black
After Earth
…
I tried, I really did, to conjure up as many black leads in science fiction as I possibly could. I’m not talking about side leads. There’s always a Lando Calrissian that plays a side lead to Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. These roles are far more abundant for African Americans, and include heroic duties for a black actor, but never as the central role. General Stacker helps the hero Charlie Hunnam in Pacific Rim; Morpheus helps Neo in The Matrix; Lt. Uhuru serves under Captain Kirk in Star Trek; Mace Windu serves the Jedi Counsel in Star Wars, but the stars are Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. As the central character, though, African Americans rarely take the lead. The only exception is for Will Smith, in a phenomenon literally known as “The Will Smith Exception”, in which Hollywood finds him bankable and acceptable enough to white audiences to place him in the lead. This problem of color in leads exists in other media as well. Literature is more diverse but still dominated by white heroes. Television shows with science fiction bents either place black actors into the side roles or, worse, allow for only one strong black lead at a time. The Walking Dead is a perfect example of that last phenomenon, as the introduction of a new black male character to the show always signals the death of the previous one.

Science Fiction and Fantasy has been my genre of choice since I was a child. I also had the good fortune to be raised in a diverse environment and while I’m definitely aware of privilege and my built in advantages due to my complexion, I have tried to be an active part of my community. As a resident of Houston, Texas, I live in what is arguably the most diverse population in America. Indian food is as easily available as Nigerian, while the local population of whites and Hispanics still make up a sizable portion of the city. However, diversity doesn’t always equal access.

Houston is diverse, but it’s also incredibly divided. A central part of town, Midtown, is known for its combination of enjoyable restaurants, slightly overpriced living, and of course its drinking scene. That same drinking scene has led to report after report of discrimination when black patrons have tried to enter these bars. ‘Saggy’ pants is a common reason given for why a black American isn’t allowed inside, even if the pants are designer jeans and no saggier than the white person that just got into the bar. The level of division is strange to the degree that I could mark for you the street where Midtown divides into ‘black’ bars from ‘white’ bars. However, that same sense of segregation was something I found as a doctoral candidate at the university. In my years there, I met only a single black candidate that was also in the History program.

Why raise these issues of barriers to African Americans in a piece aimed at science fiction? Well of course, context is everything. I originally joined the program because I am a writer and feel my greatest impact is not in doing research, but in how I communicate. I tell tales, spin yarns, weave webs, and whatever other cliché you want to use to describe writing. Recently, I made it an issue to get my novel published, FLOOR 21. When I did that, I made a conscientious decision: My lead will be black.

To which some might ask, why? Do I have an agenda? Yes, I have an agenda. At this stage in my life, almost all my friends are black. Some are from Nigeria, some are from Liberia, and some are from good old American states like New York, Rhode Island, Louisiana and Texas. These are people I’ve spent time with at graduation parties, celebrating birthdays, sharing business success with, or toasting to over drinks. So, to answer what my agenda was: to give greater representation to blacks in the one field I love most, science fiction.

And so was born Jackie. Writing, as they teach you at the highest level, is about identifying your audience. I had a certain, ‘teenage’ voice born from a slate of films that fall from the ‘twee’ genre to more popular high school escapades like Juno. However, this voice was also based on people I knew, such as the younger sisters of ex-girlfriends I remembered. In the end I created a character that fit my personality, an amalgamation of diverse influences. Jackie was black in a post apocalyptic world, enjoyed playing baseball and basketball, was a mild genius as the daughter of two brilliant scientists, and desperately introverted due to her hard upbringing. I liked Jackie. I loved her, really.  So did a lot of other people.

Then came the day I released my artist rendition of her. I was formerly a comic artist and so I typically try to draw scenes from my book. In the climactic final battle of the book, Jackie, dressed fully in her baseball uniform and padded by body armor, battles a creepy monster born from people’s nightmares. It’s a great closer and a scene I was really happy with. The drawing came out excellent, and all was well.

Except not for those people that seemed to have missed the idea that Jackie is, indeed, black. Not that I spent tons of time trying to describe these elements, since I believe overly long descriptions of characters’ physical appearances to be boring. But her description was no less brief that that of other characters, and if nothing else, the description of her family should have clued in readers that Jackie was actually African American, if America still existed in the world of the book.

So, of course, while most people were fine with the character choice, there were those questions:
“Is she really black?”
“Why did you make her black?”
“Are you trying to be politically correct?”
“Don’t you think that makes it harder to identify with her?”
“She doesn’t sound black.”

The statement “She doesn’t sound black” is one of the most ear grindingly, soul crushingly, terribly irritating statements on the planet. My last girlfriend, a graduate of A&M and a reporter, complained constantly of being told by older friends and some family that she talked white. She complained that white people made condescending comments growing up about being well spoken. Even some current acquaintances of hers made the comments that she didn’t ‘sound’ black, a refrain I’ve heard other of my black friends complain about to this day.

For me, the objective was to create a character. She had a certain color of skin because I had an agenda, but that choice should say nothing about what she sounded like, what her interests were, what she enjoyed to do with her free time, how intelligent she was or her capabilities of being a hero. Fortunately, the negative comments I got back were disproportionate to the praise, but there’s always this niggling thought in the back of my head. Say, one day, the book were to sell so well that it became a movie. Would I have people not realizing Jackie’s black and trying to cast white people into the role? Would this become a situation of white washing, with a person of color being replaced by a white lead? That situation has happened in movies such as A Tale of Earthsea, Celopatra, Prince of Persia, 21 and Avatar.

I don’t know. That’s such a distant hypothetical that to me, it’s not worth wondering about. This is my first book to be published, I’m damned proud of it, and I hope that I can contribute to opening the doors to greater diversity in the lead roles of science fiction. Of course, science fiction by its nature is speculative, so for now I’m okay for settling with the statement, “Only time will tell.”  But then again, even my ability to say that might just be a result of my privilege. So instead I should say that we need to be asking for greater diversity in film and media together.