Undressed To Kill

I am not a racist. I just play one on Sunday afternoons at the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Twice in the past three weeks, I have been accosted by black youths in the locker room of my local Y.

I’ll wait until the deafening roar of gasps subsides. Did he just say that? He’d better be careful where he’s going with this! Why didn’t he just say he had a confrontation with youths? Doesn’t he know that they might be listening?

I’m sure it was my own fault. My lack of pigmentation is a catalyst for hatred, and I should be ashamed of myself for wearing it in mixed company. I should know better than to leave the house all white and all and not expect my blatant, opaque display of racial insensitivity to incite violence in my targeted audience.

This is the part of the story where I am supposed to spew my politically correct stream of righteous indignation. I’m supposed to cite my close brotherly relationships with oh so many black people. I am so colorblind that I don’t even know they are black. They come over to my house and we play Trivial Pursuit, eat popcorn and watch Friends.

They don’t, and we don’t.

Truth is, I have several black acquaintances. Truth also is, I am painfully aware of their blackness. I measure every word before it leaves my lips, and again after. Not only do I avoid making any allusion to the fact that they are black and I am white, but should they allude to their own blackness, I apologize to them, for them, for the oppressive forces in society that coerce us into cognizance of our pigmental differences. When we are together, I truly am colorblind. I am blind to every color except their blackness. I think they expect that of me. If they didn’t want their blackness to be noticeable, they wouldn’t claim a month on the calendar and buy so much media advertising to celebrate it.

My social conditioning won out in the first locker room confrontation. I felt naked in my whiteness, and I took my medicine like a good, repentant villain. However, my social conditioning failed in the second confrontation. The recharge period for my socioeconomic guilt battery must be longer than three weeks, because this time I was naked in my whiteness. Figuratively and literally. Judging from the reaction of one of the three youths, the one who was unable to flee the locker room for a safe haven, it’s pretty scary to be backed into a corner, eyeball to eyeball with a naked, angry white man.

He was quick. He ducked and bolted, telling me, "I’m gettin’ outta here before I go to jail!"

That pissed me off. Did he mean that he would have the upper hand? Was he implying that he would go to jail for what he could do to me? Or was I just being an overly analytical naked white man who was reading too much into this kid’s primal need to escape? No matter. I had already donned the white sheet and lit the torch. They provided ready warmth for this naked white guy in a dank, damp locker room.

"You’re still goin’ to jail. You’ve been goin’ to jail since you were a cum stain on your momma’s dirty mattress."

Oops.

What I meant to say was this:

"I have been coached to understand that you are not responsible for your poor life choices. I’m sorry. My fault. You, on the other hand, have been coached to retrospectively place the blame elsewhere for the poor life choices that have been forced upon you. I’m sorry. My fault.

Please allow me to explain one thing, if you will. If you aren’t fishing for the White Devil, don’t bait your hook with Angry Black Man. If you do, you will catch your limit every time. I will jump into your boat, bread myself and ask directions to the frying pan.

I am not a racist. But courtesy of your gracious, voluntary, three-on-one mentoring program, I can learn."

I’m a good learner. He’s a good teacher. Together we can dumb down the racism curriculum so everyone passes with flying colors. In separate but equal classrooms.