Serenading the Donkey

Over the years I have had many times when I have had to call out others on their words, behavior, or attitudes on race, class or ethnicity and I have used a variety of means to get my point across.  The first  such incident was when I was 13 years old and my sister and a friend were skipping rope to the rope song that uses the "N_" word.   I said we don't use that word in this place and the girls argued with me about it. I just said that if they used that word I would go tell Grandpa, and they complied. 

In a high school the teacher had let the discussion degenerate and the topic of "welfare" came up and a girl stated  an old stereotype that my Daddy says "All the blacks go pick up their welfare checks in Cadillacs."  I wanted that direction of the conversation to end immediately, so I blurted out "Well your Daddy is a racist."  There was silence in the room for a couple of minutes and then the teacher changed the subject. 

When people have bought up anti-immigrant ideas, I usually felt that the racism and class bias is more subtle than the above, so I often try refuting the matter with factual points.  The bias is usually too deep to overcome, but occasionally I get agreement.  One of the thing I sometimes say that often gets agreement is that workers like us, regardless of color or immigration status have in common our interests as workers; that we often are mistreated by employers, suffer low wages etc. 

I had a graveyard shift job at a convenience store cashier for a while and there were race based incidents that occurred there. The reality of Harlan Ellison's "Invisible Man" novel hit home when a white customer stepped in front of a black customer already in line for the cash register. In that case I chose not to address  it as a race issue but to simply say "In this store we wait on the first customers first." Another incident involved a regular who worked at a nearby print shop and was also a musician.  An African American costumer had just left the store as he came in and he made a reference to that "N_".  Because he was a regular I choose to wait until the next time to speak to the matter which gave me time to think what to say.  I knew that he was from Louisiana and I reasoned he would know the names of famous Louisianan musicians, so I would use that to make my approach more subtle. The next time he came in I said, "I know that you are from Louisiana and are a musician.  I   really like the music from there.  Some of my favorite are..."  By the time I had named over a dozen African American  musicians from his home state, I could tell that he got the point. 

When I was working as a parking attendant a few years later, incidents  of racial, ethnic prejudice on the part of customers occurred regularly. It was common for someone to complain to me that the  "other parking attendant" didn't speak English, the other attendant being from one of the East African nations, because many East Africans work in Seattle's parking industry. The problem wasn't that the attendant didn't speak English, but that the customer didn't try to understand their accent.  Most of the Africans I know in America speak multiple languages--two or three African languages, English and one or more European languages. In Africa there are so many encounters between people of differing backgrounds that becoming a polyglot is not uncommon.  So I would tell customers that they did speak English, you aren't trying hard enough to understand their accent and that in fact they speak several languages. 
In one of the garages I worked in we had drivers out front to park customers cars during events at the nightclub next door. A customer came back late and drunk and was belligerent about getting there car that night. The Valet manager and an African American valet were there and she said "Have your 'boy' " get my car. The Valet manager decided to give her the car despite of her being drunk and it being after closing  but went to get it himself, while the other valet waited.  When he returned all of us were there so I took payment, remaining polite through the transaction,  and then turned to her before she drove out and said "And by the way, in this garage we don't employ 'boys', we employ men. 

Another garage I worked in was under a hospital .  There are doctors and hospital administrators who treated us with respect, but a few seemed to have a class prejudice  against us as inferiors.  It's been my experience that some highly intelligent people work in menial occupations, and often times, especially if they are immigrants, they may have a level of education that far exceeds the demands of the job.  I was standing by the parking booth talking with an attendant from Eretria, when he spot a doctor walking by to go get his car. My fellow attendant said to me, "That guy always has an attitude that I'm stupid." I knew my friend was well read so I said," When he drives up let's be talking about 'Garcia Lorca.' "The doctor seemed somewhat surprised, just like we planned.  I don't think we educated the guy, but I do think we felt better for having done this.

I told that last story recently to a African American woman who works in a Goodwill store and has a degree in English.   She said "I call that 'serenading the donkey.'" There are a lot of donkeys out in this world and most of the ones I have 'serenaded' will probably remain much as they work, a few may have changed for the better. But I'm going to go on singing my songs because not responding is not an option.