Snowflakes and geriatric gunmen...

I'm having a strangely racially charged week.

Yesterday, I was walking up Melrose Avenue near my house, on my way home from meeting with an artist and grabbing a few things at the grocery store in the midst of a desperate pee-haze. (You know, the total inability to concentrate on anything because of how badly you have to pee? It had been four hours and I was getting desperate. I went on a mad dash through that grocery store, man.) I was barreling down the sidewalk at quite a clip, focused on getting to my place and putting down my bags, when a nicely dressed older black man walked by: "Good evening, beautiful," he said, then continued on his way. No big deal. I smiled a little at him and kept walking. I've gotten used to the occasional comment, particularly when on Melrose. The tone of most of them is of appreciation, a little lewdness, but whatever. I mean, I look at people on the street, and I usually wouldn't have audacity to say anything to someone I found attractive, but that's really on me for being shy. I don't mind people telling me I look good, so long as they're not mean, overtly rude, or in some way hindering my progress down the sidewalk.

About a block later, two guys came out of a store and took up positions on the sidewalk directly in front of me, walking verrrry slowly. They were both black, really tall, dressed nicely, and obviously in no hurry to get anywhere. I, on the other hand, was desperate to get to my bathroom, so I moved up on the outside to scurry around them. As I drew up next to them, we walked three abreast for a few seconds, and I noticed the guy closer to me do a very conspicuous up-and-down once over of me. Again, this didn't bother me, since he wasn't trying to touch me or stop me in pursuit of relief.

But then, as I started to pull away in front, he said very quietly: "Hey, snowflake." It was an almost monotone, loud enough for me to hear it but not a shout for others to hear. I couldn't quite tell if it was a flat-out racial slur meant to hurt my feelings, or some sort of hurtful come-on. Either way, I had no idea what to do.

What I wanted to do was stop, wheel around, and lay on some really biting insult, or at least a witty reprimand for his behavior. Something that just fed his own medicine back to him. But, as is my wont, I couldn't come up with anything because my brain had shut down when he'd said it in the first place. I could have turned and blatantly glared at him, but then other people might have thought I was the bigot.

So I settled for just ignoring him and walking away a little faster. The comment itself didn't bother me too terribly much - not everybody can be nice all the time, and it really has nothing to do with me. But the more I thought about it, the more amazed I became. That's the first time anyone has ever said something overtly and meanly racist to me, or at least the first time it's been overt enough that I noticed it. I can be pretty spacey on the street sometimes.

But, really, I've been in the minority demographically in every neighborhood I've lived in since high school. That's eight years, baby. During college I was living in the Bronx, then I went to the reservation for a year, and then even in Chicago I was living in the gayest neighborhood in the city. Then I came back to New York, where I've lived in Harlem and now the Bronx again. And sure, I've gotten some weird looks and some rude stares, and sure I've heard people giggle as I walk by, and sure I get comments on my ass from time to time, but I've never had someone just come out and tell me before that they didn't like me for my white skin. It's weird. I don't know if that's a testament to people generally being nice, or how far we still have to go. I mean, imagine the uproar if a black person were walking down the street in TriBeCa and somebody made a snide remark about his/her race. Can you imagine? It'd be big news. Nobody can do that these days. We've come pretty far on that front.

But hey, I'm just whitey. Little pale chick in the Bronx. Fair game, right? After all, I'm encroaching on someone else's territory. This isn't my hood. Right? On the one hand I can understand frustration and even people vaguely disliking me on the street. I really AM a representative of my race, and as such, can be perceived as a harbinger of higher rent, property values skyrocketing, Starbucks on the corner where Cookie's used to be. People who can't afford to pay out the nose for the posh new SoBro neighborhood could, in ten years, be forced to move even further from the city because of people just like me. So, sure, if someone sees me coming and feels a little ping of mistrust, there's nothing I can do about that.

But, wait! What the hell? What's going on here, is this some weird urban mutation of Stockholm Syndrome? Bullshit! Nobody in this country should ever be made to feel unwelcome ANYWHERE. I mean, with the possible exception of certain situations, like a woman in a cocktail dress and stilettos wandering into a subway homeless camp. But in public? On the street? In daylight? I don't give a shit if you think you know something about me because of how I look, it doesn't give you the right to bother me with your prejudice. That's not right. I have as much of a right to live in the South Bronx as anybody else and fuck you for having an issue with where I make my home. I LIKE my neighborhood. I shop there, I'm probably going to join the co-op there. I contribute. I pay taxes.

I should've just as quietly and calmly intoned: "Darkie" at that guy. A term so antiquated and ridiculous it would either have turned on a lightbulb over his head about how equally ridiculous it was for him to be mean to me, or thrown him into a rage and turned me into a victim of a hate crime. But at least I'd have felt better.

As it is, I'm just left scratching my head about how to feel.

So I come to work today and see the front page of the Wall Street Journal: "White Supremacist Suspected in Shooting at Holocaust Museum." And a picture of an 88-year-old man being led away in cuffs for fatally shooting a security officer at the Holocaust Museum in DC. Come ON, people. This would be ludicrous, if someone hadn't been killed, and it's just heartbreakingly sad as it is. Can you imagine, in the goldest of your golden years, at 88 years of age, being so filled with hatred for other people just because they don't have the same heritage as you? Forget rent hikes, forget property values, forget paying taxes. Here's a man who, overcoming the many obstacles to so doing, has survived for nearly nine decades on this war-torn planet, who one would hope would be wearing slippers on his porch and enjoying a nice Scotch while his dog sleeps on his lap, has instead let himself fall so deeply into arbitrary malice that he's going to go out this way? This is why people calling each other names on the street is so bad.

It's not just an issue of someone being rude, it's an issue of teaching people to live their lives in love with the world and the people in it. The world might be a fucked up place in a whole lot of basic ways, but the last thing it needs is those of us living in the wealthiest, most bountiful and diverse place in the world to spend their days eyeing each other with suspicion and seething hatred. Life is way, way, way too short to spend it feeling bad about differences that only run skin deep, and even about differences that run deeper. So people look different, think differently. So what? Calm down, people. Take an afternoon off. Go to the park. Watch some squirrels playing. Look into the eyes of a carriage horse. Look into the eyes of someone on the street with love, compassion, and the assurance that the two of you are composed of the same stuff and are the results of the same millions of years of diligent evolution and the lucky winners of the prize of capitalizing upon the tiny, infinitessimal chance that you could both have been formed of non-living matter in order to now be standing there, facing each other, having survived so long and come so far. It's incredible, isn't it? It's amazing when you look out into the street, or into space, to realize the chances of you being where you are right now, next to the person beside you, no matter what he looks like or where he comes from. Just. Calm down.