Ideal Racism

When I was growing up in Pocahontas, Iowa, the entire world was white. Everyone I saw was the same color. There were no black people anywhere.

OK, I probably saw a few black store clerks or wait staff in Fort Dodge when I went with my mother to shop or go to the dentist. Fort Dodge was a big city. But in Pocahontas, it was different. One race; one economic class; one religion.

I was still quite young when the bishop of the Iowa Methodist church conference came to preach one Sunday. Dr. Thomas was black. For some reason, he stopped at our home to talk with my parents. My twin crawled up onto his lap and wiped his hand across his face to see if the black would come off. He did this several times, each time looking at his palm with confusion.

I was aloof, with no interest in getting close to this black man. I suppose it was all so charming – my twin trying to wipe off the color of his skin and me a safe distance away trying to avoid touching him. Dr. Thomas probably laughed, and my parents would have been amused.

Fast forward a decade. My family still attends the Methodist church, and it’s still all white.

My future wife had been coming to our church for about a year. No one in the church seemed very interested in getting to know her. We were a gated community inside a building where newcomers were not really welcome but we smiled at them anyway.

One Sunday, she came to church with a black friend. It was her standard encounter with these same Christians and their unsociability.

The very next Sunday the world changed. This time the members were quite eager to discover who this woman was after all. Pump up the “We’re so glad to meet you” sentiment, and tell us all about your friend.

People swarmed her was because they needed to know if this black man were going to become a fixture in their congregation. They must have been relieved when she told them he lived in Omaha and was only visiting.

Fast forward another decade. I was working in state government in Iowa. I had a black friend who worked in another agency. Let’s call him Sam. Sam was a well-paid employee with an important job. He was also the kind of man who daily stepped out of GQ magazine wearing stylish suits and expensive cologne.

One day, I happened to mention to him that my hometown was Pocahontas. His eyes got big and he smirked. He had a story about Pocahontas that he said I would never forget, and he was right.

Sam’s job required him to travel across the state a great deal, and when he did he always drove a government vehicle clearly marked with “official state” license plates and a large door decal with the words “State of Iowa.”

On one trip to northwest Iowa, Sam stopped in Pocahontas to eat lunch at the Ideal Café. (The café is gone but the building was later occupied by the Kaleidoscope Factory.) Sam parked his state car right in front of the building and went inside.

The Ideal was long and narrow. On one side was a lunch counter with ten or so fixed stools to sit on. The rest of the space was tables and booths.

Sam sat down at the lunch counter and looked at the menu. He’d been there only a moment when the café employee approached him with questions. “Have you been here before?” “Where are you from?” “Where do you work?” “Where are you going?” Sam said it felt like an interrogation. Still, the questions were asked politely and he answered in kind.

He ordered a hamburger and fries. While he waited a uniformed city police officer walked through the door. He sat down at the counter right next to Sam.

The questioning resumed. Sam answered the same questions that had been asked by the employee. This time Sam said it really did feel like an actual interrogation. With his state vehicle parked just outside the door, Sam thought it should have been obvious to the officer who he was. He even showed the officer his state ID card! He posed no threat. He shouldn’t have raised suspicions.

Soon enough the cross-examination was over and Sam’s meal arrived. Sam reached for the ketchup and picked up the top of the bun. What he saw on the hamburger was something he said looked like semen. He then glanced down the length of the counter to the service window in the kitchen. As soon as he looked in that direction, he saw two young men laughing who quickly ducked out of view.

Sam put the bun down, picked up the check, paid for the uneaten burger and fries, and walked out. He never went back to the Ideal Café.

I grew up without any black friends, and not once seeing any black people in town. For all I knew, I thought I’d grown up in a community void of prejudice. As far as I was concerned, there was absolutely no evidence of racism anywhere in town. No signs to segregate people. No outed KKK members. No city zoning laws to keep blacks away.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was naïve.

Generally, we all have trouble being around people we don’t like or don’t understand. Straight men get uncomfortable around drag queens. Evangelicals get anxious about being near Satan worshippers. Straight women shake their heads at lesbians. Liberals denigrate conservatives, and conservatives return the favor.

Even when it comes to the disabled, we squirm. When I’ve taken my son out to a store or to the mall, everyone who passes us can’t help but stare. We all stare at anything that’s different from what we want or expect to see.

Sometimes staring leads to shunning – but that impulse is based exclusively on distance. Queers marching in a San Francisco parade wearing only G-strings don’t agitate me like they might if they were lounging in my driveway. A black man who visits once and then goes home is of no concern compared to a badass black man, with his pants pulled down to reveal his underwear and butt, who buys the house next door and becomes a permanent addition to the neighborhood.

The same thing could be said about a Hindu or a Buddhist, a neo-Nazi, a gay or lesbian couple, a biker gang member, a rightwing conspiracy fool, or a leftwing nut-job, but only if they were too close for comfort. When they’re too different or too close our doormats don’t say “welcome.”

Move over COVID-19! This is the original social distancing: separating ourselves from diversity; avoiding the divergent; escaping the deviating! Embrace the homo! Embrace sameness! Build a homocentric world and stay there until you die.

That’s not for me. Give me a world different from mine and let me explore it without being ridiculed for wanting to see and feel things that are dissimilar from everything I know about life. I don’t comprehend lesbianism, but don’t tell me I shouldn’t want to have lesbian friends or that they’re going to hell. I don’t grasp much about other religions, but don’t tell me I shouldn’t spend time with Muslims or that they’re all terrorists. Don’t tell me I shouldn’t spend time with gays, because if I do I’ll become one.

Neo-Nazi’s disgust me, but I wouldn’t avoid a chance to have lunch with one. I could say the same thing about my spending time with a porn actor, a drug addict, a flat-earth advocate, an assassin for hire, or even the Antichrist.

What do I gain in life if all I experience is the same brand of vanilla ice cream every day? What kind of adventure is that? My hunch is the vast majority of people don’t want to see change or be changed. They don’t want to be near things or people that make them nervous or frightened. Their default is avoidance so their homocentric world can be preserved and passed on to their children.

When I was a little boy I didn’t want to touch a black face. What if that never changed my entire life? What if I didn’t want to touch a gay face, or a pagan face, or a Democrat face, or a deformed face? What kind of a man would I be if I believed faces other than the ones that look like mine are never worth touching?

I can’t imagine any scenario through the rest of my life where I would face the prospect of being served semen on my food. Yet, I’d rather sit with Sam and eat that food than tell him he doesn’t belong in the Ideal Café, or in my life, or in this world.

Racism is ugly, degrading, and repugnant, but perhaps for too many in this country the idea of serving ejaculate camouflaged as a condiment to some unsuspecting black man becomes deliriously entertaining. As they grope desperately in their imaginations to concoct ever more decadent innovations to assert their racial superiority, the only thing proven is that they are forever unworthy to sit with Sam at any lunch counter in this country.