The retiree J had an oxygen tank. He walked to the corner bar. He smoked, drank, and held his oxygen mask over his face. When anyone asked him how he was he said I’m still here.
J was a very intelligent handsome black man. He still got berated by doormen and service people for the color of his skin. He didn’t hate white people. He liked to overpower groups of white parents with his magnificent voice and intelligence he exercised at Oberlin college. He spoke to them about difference. When he was overcome with pleasure and pain he lowered his oxygen mask. He had splendid hands. He used them to demonstrate his knowledge about equity and equality, disability, ability, race, and geography.
He talked to the white parents who saw him at his dive bar about the intelligent men and women he has met at Yale and Harvard. He said that he has met the dumbest students there who belong to affluent families. He corroborated everything with statistics. J talked to them about, bald eagles, mount St Helens, basalt, horse back riding, skiing, hiking, electric shock therapy, gardening, incest, the after life, dead parents, mutiny, taxes, leaders, independent schools, standardized tests, home schooling, debt, cancer, diet, gender, architecture, the literary canon, suicide, late night television, Rachel Maddow’s eye shadow, Trayvon, and Zimmerman.
They feel guilty about what they have done to us, said J.They think about how they are going to adjust their children’s perception to race to include everyone, even the mentally ill and those who have been locked up away from society.