How I talk to white supremacists
Author: Jamal Yearwood [Medium]
Last week I asked my boss what white supremacy meant to him and he said he hadn’t heard of it.
What about white superiority? Wasn’t familiar. White pride? Never came across it. What about white nepotism? He paused, “there were some white nepotists where I grew up, but the rest of the town…they were good people.” I nodded and thanked him. I had never known how they self-identified.
To me, white nepotism looks like the world’s thinnest safety net. A plastic bag being used as a face mask; and thanks to Obama, the child safety warning is missing. It’s annoying to watch, but sometimes I find myself playing doctor. Like with the guy last week waiting to be interviewed in front of me. I contemplated it for a while but the sound was driving me mad.
“It’s the plastic bag on your face.”
He gasped while ripping it off. “Woah, thanks man. I appreciate it”.
I gave him a thumbs up.
But it doesn’t always end well. Like afterward, when the interviewer started hyperventilating but couldn’t hear me over the sound of her bag. “Excuse me, Mam,” I shouted. “I think it’d be easier to breathe if you took the plastic bag off your face.” “What?” she shouted back. “I’m sorry but there’s a loud plastic bag sound coming from somewhere in the room.”
When she passed out, I gathered my things and just left.
I actually knew a white nepotist growing up; actually, I knew a few. One was my high school basketball coach. He always made sure our jerseys were tucked in, that we stuck to the fundamentals, and that dunking was strictly prohibited. The Dunk, as he called it, was agreed to be removed after some concerned parents heard that students were getting scholarships solely based on their ability to put a ball in a basket. A clear unfair advantage, the school board banned it that year along with slam poetry, dreadlocks, and handshakes involving any superfluous movement.
Sometimes white nepotism has helped me, like when I got my first job. I was on the playground playing Cowboys and Indians when I got called into the office. The casting director was looking for a young, well-spoken male, preferably a third/fourth-grader for the latest issue of, “Kids Who Definitely Attend this School”. I didn’t have an agent at the time so Luis and Yu walked me through the terms and conditions. It was a good gig, and luckily I got called back for both the follow-ups. “Students Who Definitely Attend This College” and “People Who Definitely Work Here”. Neither were as successful as the original, but I was just happy to get to put well-spoken on my resume.
I asked a white nepotist once why they subscribed to the ideology. It took them a minute, but they eventually responded between bites of their lunch.
“The Economy. Oh, and Family. How bout yourself?”
I put them on hold and asked my new manager how I should reply; I had recently started splitting time between my normal role and the diversity unit after they found out that I could dunk and was well-spoken.
“Nothing”, she replied, “Just keep going down the list.”
I thanked them and said, “Same as you.”
