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Systemic Racism Is a Conceit of the Elites
If you’re one of the elite, or feel entitled to be elite without lifting a finger or breaking a sweat–but you’re not elite so obviously someone is keeping you down, oppressing you and rigging the game so that you cannot reach the exalted status to which you aspire, you have the luxury of believing in systemic racism.
If you work, you don’t care who is on your crew, as long as that person can get the job done.
Not 10 minutes ago, I finished reading and then commenting on Gary McVey’s (@garymcvey) outstanding post on Henry Ford and Nazism. Then, a couple minutes before it was time to call The Lovely and Talented Mrs. Mongo, I went outside to finish my drink and fortify myself with some nicotine. When I’m on the road, whether CONUS or overseas, from the time I step foot outside the house for the trip, until the time I shuffle back in with my suitcase and computer bag, everything negative that happens on the home front is my fault. I get it. I got it. I’ve learned how to telephonically roll with the punches. Still, my worst trips are the CONUS trips, because I can’t claim I was in a location where there was no cell coverage or landlines. No cover story for not calling, so suck it up, Cupcake.
To ensure I’m the best Mongo I can be, I ensure I’m in the right frame of mind to make the call and have the conversation and not get impatient about things that I consider irrelevant and make the fatal error of saying something akin to, “Got it, move on.” See, that’s bad marital decision-making. Better to patiently listen and, as/when appropriate make sounds like “Mm-hmm,” “Uh-huh,” and “tsk-tsk.” Also, I don’t have one big superpower, but I have several little ones. One of which is the ability to let my mind wander, during the conversation, over the things I need to do the next day of the trip, the things I need to do upon my return home, how best to echelon the tasks I have coming up.
The mini-superpower is, when I get the inevitable “You’re not listening to me!” I can recite the last five minutes of the conversation verbatim, even though, yeah, I wasn’t listening. Move over, Iron Man.
But as I walked outside, there were members of a crew pitching quarters outside the side door of the La Quinta Inn I’m at.
If you’re the manager of a construction site, and you’ve got a requirement for a surge of skilled, scheduled labor, you often import a crew. Then you put them up at a local, livable but slightly seedy (hey, never lose sight of King Bottom Line) hotel like my beloved Miami La Quinta so that they can lay the pipe, do the wiring, plumb the project.
I’ve noted over the last couple days that such a crew is staying at the (my) La Quinta. I estimate that the crew is between 11 and 14 tradesmen. Working-class men who are there to get the job done.
When I walked outside to get a little pre-phone call nicotine fortification, a slice of that crew was pitching quarters. While I was out there, another five or six exited the building, headed out for chow.
It was, something out of a movie, but whoever made the movie would be accused of stereotyping and inserting obligatory tropes. When I looked at the panorama of working-class dudes that just want to do a job: there’s the tall, lanky black dude with the jeans under his ass but the boxers covering the rest–oh, and he had a magnificent mane of dreads. There’s the Hispanic dude with tats all over his neck. There’s the long, greasy-haired white dude who is kind of short and squatty with those cargo shorts that fall below knee-length and upon whose belt you can see the chain that loops down but rises again to secure his wallet in his pocket. That dude has tats like the Latino dude, except for his tat schemata was gained trespassing somewhere, and instead of shotgunning rock salt at him, the owner shot him with salted ink. Random, no theme, no coherence.
I watched these guys, while some of them moved out for dinner and some stayed pitching quarters. I abjured the offer of joining the quarters pitching by saying, “Gentlemen, I do not partake of games of chance, lest I not be able to make this month’s rent.” Eh, I got a laugh out of it.
But while I finished my bourbon and my unfiltered Camel, with my mind on Henry Ford, antisemitism and Nazism, I realized that there was no racism anywhere near where I stood. There were men, masters of their craft, there to do a job, and I am more than sure they cared about the competence and craftsmanship of their cohort far moreso than each other’s race.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a phone call I gotta make.
———–BREAK———–
So, called The Lovely and Talented Mrs. Mongo, and the call went directly to voicemail, immediately thereupon I got a text saying, “I’m on a call, call you later.”
Okay. Proofread the post (for me, proofreading is a relative term, I’m more than sure that there are spelling/grammar mistakes aplenty). I was about to hit “send.” Then, I thinks to myself, “Hey, those guys are still out there pitching quarters. I wonder what they would think of the post?” So I went outside and asked them if they’d participate. They thought I was maybe/probably a weirdo, but said yes. I went back to my room, grabbed the MacBook, and then exited and read everything above the BREAK to them.
First, it was a point of pride that they were not tradesmen surging to a job site. They were employees of a conveyor-belt-making company, down in Miami to provide warranty service.
Out of the cast of characters depicted above, the sample was a big black guy, the Hispanic with the neck tattoo, a pure-D country redneck accented dude, and then a clean-cut kid with a beard, maybe on a summer job, dunno. Looked like Spencer Klavan’s kid brother. I told them that because the post was about systemic racism, the black guy would get to comment first.
After the post (all names here are made up) Darryl the black guy said, “well, it sounded like there were a lot of stereotypes in there.”
“Dude, you’re a big-ass black dude and–what kind of cigarette are you smoking?”
“A Kool.”
“Okay, is there a bigger stereotype than that?”
And that kind of kicked off the whole, free-wheeling conversation. Me mostly listening to the warranty servicers and throwing in a question every now and then. I don’t have the time or memory to try to reproduce the whole conversation word-for-word, but I’ll try to convey the gist of the conversation.
Hispanic Neck Tattoo Guy (HNTG) pointing at pure country redneck guy: “Yeah, we’re friends now, but I did not like this guy when I first met him. Now, we’re tight, man. We hang.”
Me: Okay, how come you didn’t like him? ‘Cause he’s white? ‘Cause he sounds so redneck he should be named Cooter (accepting a little bit of operational risk, here)?
Cooter: No, man. See, Juan used to work for the company, then he took a break to do some other stuff, then he came back.
Mongo: Lemme guess, you didn’t work there when he left, but you were there when he came back.
Cooter: You got it. And when he came back, they made him a crew boss, ’cause this guy knows things, man. You don’t let that kind of talent go to waste.
Mongo: Okay.
Cooter: So they pulled a couple guys off my crew to round out his crew, and one day in the cafeteria, I just stopped and talked for a while with my old guys that were on his crew now. And then this dude is hatin’ on me all the time.
Juan: That’s right, I couldn’t stand this guy.
Mongo: Lemme guess, I think I got it ’cause it works like this in the military. Juan, you had the ass ’cause Cooter didn’t go through you before he talked to your guys.
Juan: That’s exactly what it was.
Cooter: So, we went somewhere where we could hash it out privately. I said, “Dude, what’s your (CoC)ing problem? And he told me. And I was like, Holy (CoC), I’d feel the same way. And we been tight ever since.
Cooter: Man, this whole racism thing is just stupid. Some of my best friends are–
Mongo: Stop! You can’t ever start a defense of why you’re not a racist with that. You’re setting yourself up for failure.
Cooter: Yeah, but it’s true.
Mongo: Doesn’t matter.
Then I gave some of my insights on how to respond if one is called a racist. Can’t go into it. Severely non-CoC compliant.
Then I brought up the whole Rush Limbaugh (Peace be upon him) Rushism about how if you love this country you’ll be called a racist, bigot, homophobe. Oh, and what’s that word for when you hate women? Misogynist?
Cooter: Man, who thinks that way? Look, I got a friend from high school that I always thought was a little fruity, y’know, but after a while I figured out he was full-up gay. Now, I ain’t down with gay [insert a bunch of homoerotic jokes here that we made, asserting that he was, in fact, gay]. Nah, man, I don’t abide that stuff. But I tell you what, if I was drivin’ down the street and some dudes were beating him up, because he was gay or any other damn thing, I’d pull over and whoop some ass and take care of that guy. I’m not sure how many people would.
Mongo: Really? You’re not sure? (raise my own hand) Who here would pull over and help out a gay friend if he was getting beat up, whatever the reason?
Every hand went up.
Mongo: See, you’re not alone. They just want to make you think you’re alone.
A lot more, but I won’t go on, except for this.
HNTG: Hey man, my 16-year old kid is smart!
Cooter: Yeah, he’s got a smart kid.
HNTG: Yeah, I tol’ him I had read that there was 37 genders out there, an’ what was all that about? He said, “Dad, there’s two genders, and 35 different ways of being queer.”
I had a great time. Want to continue to write about it, but I really, really have a phone call to make.
Published in General
Important day in California, too! I assume no patron at the restaurant was wearing a face-diaper?
I wish you could teach my husband how to have that superpower. ;)
So you had the “race talk” with people of color. Eric Holder should be proud, but he won’t.
The left is finally starting to eat its own on this issue.
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/15/1006606967/lin-manuel-miranda-apologizes-for-lack-of-afro-latinx-actors-in-in-the-heights
They have built an ideology on a series of often inconsistent fictions.
Thus, the “Latinx” fiction allows the descendants of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors, slavers, and colonists to hide behind the descendants of the Amerinds displaced and Africans enslaved and place the responsibility for the hemisphere’s problems on descendants of immigrant millworkers, etc.
Yes. I’m percolating an AOC post on just that.
It’s about can they do the job. As a former distribution center manager, I approve of this message.
This is called projection, Boss. They think you would do with guns what they actually would do with guns.
At my previous job, I worked with an entirely black management structure, mostly black staff, etc. Any racial friction was from management types, not the trades. One time a black manager accused the ultra-Irish engineer (stationary operating engineer – HVAC, boilers, etc) of racism for not giving the black engineers more OT. His response “Two of them told me they don’t want any OT and only work their shift. The other dude gets OT whenever he asks for it. If I gave them the OT, it would take twice as long since they would be forced to be there” After the black go-getter engineer got seriously injured (on disability for over a year), management tried to throw him under the bus. The Chief engineer had his back and brought in the dudes from the Union Hall, as well as a certain white safety professional. The facts showed he was not being negligent – the contractor left an open shaft right in front of an exit stairwell, with minimal signage on the exit door. Most of the trades people were vets, and I never got any BS from them, with the exception of one psycho janitor.
One of the things I like about my job is that I work in the part of academia that still cares about actually doing stuff well and getting things done. Get results and get the publication so you can get the grant. Most of the garbage woke stuff is left to the side.
I tell new young husbands that they need a 15 second total spousal recall tape – that’s all I have been able to manage but it’s enough. Mongo is the boss.
We had a bunch of straight-woke-white women in our town plan a Gay Pride event. In their online postings they make it clear that if you do not promote, celebrate, and encourage the homosexual lifestyle then you are a hateful gay-basher. Truth is more like what you mention above.
Premarital counseling leaves out a lot of things that every married guy should know
Excellent post, @bossmongo – I loved it from start to finish!
You have highlighted an unappreciated point here, Boss. This statement presumes that the work to be done requires skilled workers to complete. Acquisition of a skill is the result of the careful application of a long list of Western values. There exists an objective, external reality. That reality can be understood and manipulated by rational people. Diligence. Hard work. Education. Individual reward for individual effort. Personal responsibility. Etc.
All too often in today’s automated world, jobs require little skill. Without need for a skill, it’s easy to grow into adulthood without developing those necessary attributes, or appreciating their importance. Without skill it’s difficult to determine the basis for who succeeds and who doesn’t. It’s easy for some to ascribe other’s success / ones own lack of success to caprice or worse, racism.
It’s a good equation. I like what you’ve done with it.
I can’t help but suspect that before we invented the EEOC, people got a lot of work done.
Duh I’m so non-male, non-working guy, that I thought pitching quarters meant they were setting up tents for living in. I am now covered with shame and feel like I need to join a work gang just to get right.
Just keep in mind the three overarching principles of engineering:
• You can’t push a rope.
• The sum of the forces equals zero, sooner or later.
• Everything that goes in comes out unless it stays there. This is sometimes referred to as the Conservation of the Inconvenient.
Just an aside, Bossman…
Any chance of convincing you to forswear your worship at the church of the “great god Nick o’ Teen”? (Kipling)
“THERE’S TWO GENDERS AND 35 DIFFERENT WAYS OF BEING QUEER”
Man, that is the best line I’ve heard all year! Thank you Boss. So last week I started some physical therapy for a bum shoulder. It’s not real disabling, but I really miss my golf and the shoulder does prohibit that pleasure. As with any new medical service these days, one must fill out a multi-page form listing everything that has happened to you since you were born. If you need a splinter removed they want to know when and what was every operation you ever had. At 74 years old, that’s a lot of information. To start the form we have the drop-down window for “what race are you?” I go, OK this will be simple. But NOOOOOOO! I click the arrow and here pops up a list about 25 names long ending with “click here for more”. Being a Caucasian, I thought that one click was all I needed. Again NOOOOOO. After 4 clicks I finally came to the word “WHITE”. Whaaaaaaaat??? I had to make the call…couldn’t let it go. A young lady answers. “Mamm, I am trying to fill out your form online but I can’t find the correct answer for my Race. First, from my knowledge, there are only three, maybe four, races. You have about 100 races listed and Caucasian isn’t even amongst them. How can I finish the form?” She told me to leave it blank. So there you have it. My race is blank and, as such, I can never be a racist. I thanked her and hung up.
An aside to an aside…
I quit smoking decades ago, and gave up chewing tobacco on 7 MAY 04. Not a day goes by when I don’t still have the cravings. If I were to smoke cigarettes again, the only kind would be unfiltered Camels.
#MeToo
Either that or it was a euphemism for something non-CoC compliant.
I believe in Systemic Anti-Racism, like MLK.
I think this kid is imitating and mocking crazy liberal ranters.
It was probably a “simple caveman” who got bored texting his mate via cave hieroglyphics, and so decided to invent fire instead.
Gonna keep that in my back pocket.
And The Plan is working perfectly.
Except when it isn’t. Gruesome Newsome tried to show that the “Recall Newsom” effort did not involve his loyalist buddies, the hispanic underclass.
Except so many of the Latinos now participate in the middle class experience. They are just as upset as the rest of us about high taxes, which never get used for the legal reasons the taxes were initiated. They are irritated that while there apparently is no water, as we are supposed to be limited to 55 gallons a day, absolutely no affordable rental housing anywhere near where people must work, despite all this, we tax payers must stand by while the state of Calif hampers efforts to deter massive waves of new immigrants.
So you have a huge subset of new voters who can barely afford the ratty place where they live, a place where landlords tell them to shut up about repairs or move out, have no college fund for their pre teens and older kids, and realize taxes are going to go up yet again, under the Biden Presidency. Meanwhile they watch as those who came here in the last 48 months are receiving free, and in many cases brand new housing, free tuition, even to the expensive UC system free. Plus food stamps, AFDC and $ 500 per individual immigrant per month til the COVID situation ends in full.
This group is upset. They expressed their anger and frustration in several polls, until Gavin had one specially designed to omit their attitudes.
Until I finally gave up cigarettes in 2009, after a car wreck where I broke 5 ribs, I had smoked cigarettes for about 40 years. I had quit for five year stretches three times. Each time I started back smoking it was because I had seen someone smoking Camel straights at a bar and couldn’t resist bumming one from him (never knew a woman who smoked them). The next thing I knew, I was buying a pack of my own, and BAM! I was hooked again. Now, thank God, the thought of inhaling a cigarette is pretty much repulsive. Cigars otoh………while sipping bourbon……..oh boy!
Yes, and the last couple of years have given me, I think, a little insight into why some vices are found far more frequently in lower socioeconomic populations (in this case, smoking). It’s because when your life sucks in 360 degrees, it’s nice to have something to enjoy, to look forward to. I know, then addiction sinks its greasy talons into you and you’re hooked. Got it.
I have some stuff to work through. I have some definite objectives and milestones that, once reached, will mean it’s time to sac up and quit smoking. Then (gulp) quit dipping. Then I’ll probably join a church choir, or something.
I did both at the same time. It was pretty rough for a few days.
This seems to go hand-in-hand with Franco’s post about getting good musicians for his band.
Not one of these prequalifications has to do with the competency or skill required. It’s about what characteristics they are personally able to bring to whatever job they are applying for.
Nah … there’s always another fun vice right around the corner. Just have to find one not quite do deadly as tobacco. There’s a whole world of Scotch waiting to be explored. There’s the search for Pappy Van Winkle bourbon. …
Hit me up if you need vice ideas.