While it's true that I've become interested in race lately, my research has more focused on the deeply embedded historical racism of manifest destiny, and, much later, eugenics, than on the everyday relations between what used to be called colored people and what I will call, today, colorless people. Does the historical have a bearing on the synchronic? Oh yeah. But I'm framing no hypothesis here, nor taking sides with either of the usual polarities.
For one thing, it's safer that way. I don't need no buncha good-old-boy corporate suits comin round burning red herrings on my lawn, maybe fix me up with a "necktie," you dig what I'm sayin. And this despite the fact that these two books do represent, respectively, each end of that well known, if little loved, spectrum -- though I'm guessing Yo Mama may be a bit mellower. I wouldn't know, though. I never met the woman.
Rimshot. Bada-bing!
Ahem. But continuing, if you can read Ebonics upside down, the "disfunktional" bit is what I found myself most relating to, perhaps (though I hate to admit it) identifying with. I can feel yet another long-winded non-explanation forming like a cold front sweeping down from Canada, ice-boxing Chicago and points East before turning in the widening gyre to come freeze my ass off here in Colorado. So let me be brief.
The dysfunctional part, the disturbing part, is that I didn't go looking for either of these books tonight. No. I was half asleep, but couldn't get back to sleep. And I was bored. These drugs I'm taking are really no fun at all. I was looking for something in more of a comatose. As Amazon is my homepage -- as God is my witness and copilot -- I randomly typed into the search box, "yo mama," hoping that this would get me off, so to speak, to a good hypertextual start. Well folks, al I can say is be careful what you wish for. And it's not what you're thinking -- that I ended up in the lingerie department again.
Nor is it that I found a pretty balanced sounding page titled, somewhat cryptically, So you'd like to... Black History: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly -- though I did, and now I know how to... well, black history, I guess. Or ugly, though I already had that one down. Anyway, it was at the tail end of the latter (list, that is) that I found the Whitey book.
The disturbing part needed that for setup. You understand how it goes by now, right? How my mind works. But even I myself was unprepared for the stream of unbidden mentation that flooded my underslept overworked mid-night brain. And it went a little like this... Maestro?
So what do you think when you think of "S&M"? Not that you think about that sort of thing, but if you did. What comes first to mind? Sex, right? Yes, yes, OK, I understand. Sex also comes to mind when you shop for vegetables or bark your shin on the coffee table. But I mean this: ever since Kraft-Ebbing, we tend to think of sadism and masochism as having a sexual foundation. But, I asked myself in this twisted reverie, need they perforce have an explicitly sexual expression?
We all know that many CEOs go to "dungeons" where cruel but impossibly alluring dominatrixes (dominatrices?) do weird shit to them: walk on their faces with spike heels, crank down hurty clamps on their nipples, make them wear leashes and beg like dogs, etc. None of this have I experienced firsthand -- not really my cuppa, truth be told -- but I have the Internet, as do we all. Yes indeed: As... Do... We... All. Am I right, dude? Dude, am I right?
So what I got thinking is what about racial S&M? No, listen, it's not half as warped as it sounds. You have all these white liberal yuppie bobo types seething with guilt that they never even had to row a slave ship and look at all this loot they're raking in! So here's how it works. A bunch of enterprising brothers set up a crack house somewhere. It'd probably have to be in a white neighborhood because most of the the black neighborhoods are either a) already staked out for these purposes, or b) way too together to let that kinda stuff go down around the kids. But it wouldn't matter, since the johns would be blindfolded and arrive in limos
driven by too-high Haitians talkin that scary voodoo shit, maybe some a them Highly Selassy crowns on they dashes. Hell, with that dewrag wrap all roun his face, man could be in downtown Scarsdale, all he knew. A white neighborhood would have other advantages. Assuming that the cops would be regulars, a safe bet given all that neurotic stress, they could be expected to lay back on the setup, maybe take a little something on the side for their extra effort to protect and serve. Man gotta live. And this way, there could be brothers loafing on the porch with their nines and spooky chicks, scare the livin b'jesus outta you!
"Light my crackpipe, bitch!" And you'd have to do it by crawling over the man's legs so you were right in his lap, literally, to get close enough with the Bic. And the brother would like put a stick down in his pants so Whitey he be thinkin my god, they do have a bone in it! Probly crap hisself. Then, in this degraded condition, he would become suddenly even more loathsome to his torturers -- or service providers, as they would undoubtedly come to think of themselves -- and one would say: "Take this honky motherfucker out back and pop a cap in his ass yo!"
Then the real terror would set in. Oh christ, oh jesus god, oh no, they're really going to "do me"! Yeah, it was you, you'd be losin control of your bladder right about then, because ever once in a while, one-a the brothers would forget they were getting paid for this and go too far, actually snuff the cat. "Oh damn, Willy, I think I mighta kilt the motherfuck."
That's what would keep it fun and edgy though. The not entirely knowing.
And of course, everything but the "sessions" themselves would be conducted in a professional, even cordial, manner. A snifter of VSOP after, say. A cigar. A tastfully rolled spliff. Perhaps even a hip and easy chat with the "bangers," who now be goofin, cleanin they pieces right out in plain daylight, sayin hey you really work on that Exchange? Shee-it, we not chargin you enough, my man! And everbody laugh all friendly like. You go back out to the limo, the driver who brought you is now all "Yes, Sir" and "No, Sir" and "Same time next week then, Sir?" But of course, you can't wait that long. You love it. You're back in control. Black people aren't really all that bad. And afterwards you have your most productive week in years.
Seriously, I think there's big money in this. Believe me, if I were a person of color, I'd launch the first franchise chain. Maybe call it "Forty Acres and a Fool."
Spike'd like that one, yo.
