At the stadium where I work there are hundreds of black people working menial labor and hundreds of white people working admin, management, sales etc. There is some mixing of the races but by and large it breaks down in fairly predictable ways. Most of the people in my working group (club-level bartenders) are blue collar republican guys. Whenever they come across some news story or personal experience that stirs their whitey passions some of them will eagerly share with me and other white people their long list of whitey grievances. Their hatred and disdain is palpable but their grievances are about the same as Bill Cosby's I guess with a bunch of welfare stuff thrown in as well. Listening to them I can understand why some people resent Bill Cosby's brutal honesty.
There is one black man whose labor is particularly important to my working group's efforts. Any slacking or mistakes on his part can quickly slow down our whole system. He is so important that we tip him out at the end of the night. He is particularly reviled, both secretly and openly, by my working group. On a good day, the democrats I know tend to tip him about as well as they do the American Indian and the white guys who also hold his position. The republicans tip him worse than they do the others but they don't tip well anyway. On a bad day his cheerful facade reads a little too phony and the mistakes start to add up and it is hard to tip him at all.
I don't like him. The pretense of happy servitude in the face of people who clearly hate him disgusts me, not because there is anything wrong with what he is doing. It just makes me uncomfortable. On a bad day when he smiles at me with that same inhibited rage he involuntarily exhibits to everybody else it seems to humiliate me and every other person involved. I tip him the same percentage as I do every person on every day regardless of his performance and attitude. That way I don't have to think about it so much.
After many games, especially big college games, bands of drunken frat boys will pollute the surrounding neighborhoods with obnoxious behavior. They lead competitive lives and have devoted themselves to maintaining and expressing their dominance over other people. A couple of years ago they flipped cars over and set them on fire. Luckily, our college teams tend to suck. "Our n--s ain't as good as their n--s", as they say. At the local hockey games there is a fight almost every night. It is usually the loudest happiest moment of the game. Even when our guy loses, the sight of white men breaking each other's faces inspires visceral joy. When the basketball team got into a fight they canceled games, suspended players and now, years later, the sight of black men punching each other is still remembered as a traumatic event. Draw your own conclusions.
When I was in Ireland, Eminem and Snoop Dogg sold out a 50,000 seat soccer stadium. White people pump billions of dollars into hip-hop every year, just as they do professional athletics. Why so many black youth emulate these anti-social artists and spend so much money on athletic clothing remains a deep deep mystery. It would be better for society if black people could take the cheerful facades and drab attire that make their menial labor possible and wear them all of the time for us, especially on the bus. They need to understand how frightening their frustration, anger and violence is to the rest of us.
At the same time, it is a very good thing that millions of black people are getting educations and moving into professional positions. One might even become President. It is vitally important however that they not dwell too long on our nation's racial history, or the terrible legacy that remains in some severe quarters, or the anger and frustration that is endemic in every human condition. So much good can still be accomplished, so long as the facade remains in place.