(I guess you can tell Im in a very bad mood) A few years ago a friend at the Military Heritage Museum told me that a local vet was dying to write a memoir. She gave me his phone no. I called at made an appointment to meet. When I got there he opened the door, told me “we don’t want any” and slammed it in my face. Dressed in a tie and a short-sleeved shirt, carrying a briefcase, I suppose I looked like a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness or whatever, so I knocked again. When he opened the door again, I told him who I was and that he had requested the appointment. He turned to the pool guy, who apparently had preceded me by a few minutes, and said to me, “You’re not James Abraham, he is.’ Apparently, it was inconceivable that a black man could do what I did—publish books. The pool guy, dressed in his working clothes of cut-off jeans and T-shirt, apparently had to be James Abraham, in the old fool’s eyes, because he was white. What made this even funnier was that, at that point, the pool guy spoke up. He knew of me from having read the papers. “I’m not James Abraham, he is,” and pointed to me. To recover his dignity, the man told me to wait while he talked to the pool guy. He made me stand while he gave the pool guy, who I’m sure knew how to clean a pool, basic instructions. I interrupted and told him my time was too valuable to spend watching him talk to someone else. Both the pool guy and the old guy looked at me as if I were crazy. I said good-bye. I laughed as I drove away, but a part of me felt the way you would feel if you were disrespected in such a manner. It’s not easy being green here in a blood-red county. I found that out again last week, when the largest newspaper in the county refused to cover the 10th anniversary of my business. That rankled. They, like that old white guy, decided to marginalize me, to reduce me to nothing, solely to make me fit into my place in their world. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Foolish white people will read this and think I hate all white people. No, I’ve had too many people of both races treat me like a confidant and a brother. I’ve had more than 300 writers and authors trust me with their dreams, too many people for me to make simple conclusions such as whites are bad and blacks are good. But God, it hurts when fools hurt me. Fifty years after Selma, dumbasses like the old white man or the decision-makers at my hometown newspaper persist in seeing the world as they want it—as it once was-- rather than as it is. I see the world clearly and I don’t like it. But that only makes me more determined, every day, to get up and be the best man I can be. Someday, maybe the racist fools—many of whom don’t even know they’re racist, will join me.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 04:41:36 +0000
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