Op Ed
The Gods must be Crazy!!! (or maybe it’s just White people)
To be Black, and to be sane and lucid, and to be paying attention to the current climate in America right now, is to be confused, concerned and cantankerous all at once.
Lately, not one day passes where I don’t say to myself “What the fuck is going on?” It is a valid question. It seems as of late that lines are being crossed, boundaries tested. Trust me, when you’re from Bed-Stuy you know damn well when someone is testing you.
The first point I need to make, the point that lays the foundation for everything else that I’m going to write, is that the conventional American Ideal has always been one of acute white supremacy. More acute than your run-of-the-mill imperialist manifest-destiny white supremacy the rest of the world is used to, America deals with a doubling-down of actually conquering one land, totally eradicating its people (shout out to my Indigenous folk that were here before Columbus) and then using imperialism to manipulate another land, shipping those people over here to literally build an entire nation, and then maintaining the marginalization and subordination of the second group for centuries as a symbolic feather in the cap of white supremacy. America’s white supremacy is the most supreme white supremacy in existence. The shit is acute. And, it has seriously affected not only African Americans but White Americans too.
It is my personal contention that there is a connection between the fact that 64% of mass murders are committed by White men and the corruptive manifestations of White entitlement. Entitlement is the belief that one is inherently deserving of special privilege or special treatment. Try controlling a child who thinks they are entitled to a certain thing. Even if you are their parent, what you will certainly get from your attempt is an all out tantrum from the child. Can you dig it?
Try controlling a child who thinks they are entitled to a certain thing.
These White folk are really bugging the fuck out lately. I get it, though. Symbols are very important to humanity. They relay ideas and concepts that communicate literal or figurative meanings. Over the last eight years, Whites have witnessed symbols that have dealt enormous challenges to their American ideal. You had a Black man elected to the office of President. You had the LGBT community make significant strides with regards to their inalienable right of equality. The world has become more worldly, the power of social media has made people more communicable. Smart phones have cameras, and those cameras record incidents that can be posted and reviewed. Popular culture has become more and more Black. The percentage of Black men who marry women of other races has almost doubled from 2001. All of this could make your regular white man concerned. The American ideal was changing, shifting to represent a more diverse and inclusive palette, putting at odds the antiquated ideals that your most prejudiced citizens hold so dear.
Popular culture has become more and more Black.
If you’re a Black man or woman that works in corporate America, you work around Whites that voted for Trump. My sister works in corporate America. She works with a group of women, that group includes just one White woman. Leading up to the election my sister and her group would discuss the campaigns. They all agreed that they would be voting for Hillary. All of them. After the election, the White woman confided to my sister that she voted for Trump. When my sister asked her why she would act like she was voting for Hillary if at the end she really wanted to vote for Trump, the woman told my sister that she was only agreeing with the rest of the group because she didn’t want to be judged for her viewpoint. Truthfully, she just wanted to make America great again. 53% of White women voted for Trump over another White woman, because they believed in his message. They voted for an America that their White sons could reclaim.
I’m a Jets fan. The Jets don’t win much, but on those occasions when they win and the Giants lose in the same weekend, I start that new week with my chest puffed out just a little bit more. I talk a little slicker to Giants fans. Yeah whatever, y’all lost this weekend, your team is bums. I think it’s natural to be boastful in victory. But the Jets don’t win all of the time. We haven’t won a title since ‘69. So I don’t feel any entitlement. The feeling of entitlement comes as soon as the Giants are back to winning and the Jets are back to losing. That’s when I have to deal with my friends’ entitlement issues, them constantly reminding me that they are in charge in New York. They have won four chips in the last 30 years. It is the Giants, not the Jets that run the city, and I need to remember my place as the junior varsity team.
Trump winning the election, and the GOP controlling both the Senate and the House is like the Giants winning and the Jets losing. White men have taken it as a chance to remind us that they run America, not us. Trump has built a team of White men that all know what it feels like to wear a sheet over their heads with holes for eyes. From Steve Bannon, a propagandist and proponent of the alt-right, to Jeff Sessions, a man that the late Coretta Scott King wrote a letter to Congress about way back in 1986, expressing her concerns about a man who has “intimidated and frightened elderly Black voters” this is a rogues gallery of covert and overt racists. And, this is their moment to restore the classic American ideal.
Can a White man be a White man again?
Bill O’Reilly’s comment about another iconic Black woman, the honorable Maxine Waters is another example of these froggy white men trying to jump across those lines. Can a White man be a White man again? Can he speak with entitlement and demand deference to his wishes? Can he go back to telling the Blacks and the Mexicans and the gays and the women how things are going to go? These are the boundaries being tested in this bizarro administration where immigrants and Muslims are criminalized publicly in every tweet Trump sends, but when a White man says he came to NYC specifically to kill Black men our so-called President and his administration have absolutely no comment on it. Tom Brady’s missing jersey gets more FBI agents assigned to it then the young Black girls missing in D.C., and I won’t even remind you that White cops are murdering young Black boys every week.
White women voted for an America that their sons could reclaim.
Almost every year for the past 6 years and on the same day, I’ve posted the same pic of me in the hospital during my temporary and untimely demise in 2015. A few weeks after I was back to “normal”, I asked Eric “Why’d you take the pics?” And he said, “I knew you would want to write about it if you lived.” Eric was right. Eric was often right and Eric always had my best interest at heart. I am going to miss my friend.
You ever meet someone and become friends immediately?! Well this was not the case with Eric. Before he was my manager at Morgan Stanley, I would often see this 6’4″, giant white guy walk up to the only black woman at work, say something then walk away without any hint of human emotion. Naturally I thought he was a jerk until I asked her “Yo, is that dude bothering you?” She laughed and proceeded to tell me he was a great person, which I ultimately got to experience first hand. Little did I know this Italian from Staten Island was more Brooklyn than most Brooklynites.
Eric was not with the shits!! If there were ever someone who lived their life in direct, honest and no uncertain terms, that would be Eric. He would ask me questions at work like “Why are the other consultants making more money than you?” I knew the answer to that question and so did he. Eric then proceeded to increase my salary by 15K. After arguing with all our managers that “You need to hire Alfred!”, they eventually did 1 year prior to the 2015 incident. In the hospital, one of my friends asked me, “What if you didn’t have health insurance when this happened?” I would be in debt for the rest of my life is the obvious answer. I still am in debt for the rest of my life but at least, it is to those who made sure I had a more enjoyable life and for that, I will gladly repay.
My mom loved to tell me the story of how she met Eric. After they told her I was going to be in the ICU for some time, she told the doctor “Well I’m not going anywhere.” She then hears a voice from that back of the room that says “Well I’m not going anywhere either!” That was Eric and in true form, he was at that hospital every single day until I was discharged.
Eric passed away in December 2021 of stage 4 cancer. After feeling faint on his way to my bbq, he went to get checked out and was diagnosed. During the past 5 years, Eric lost his mom, twin brother and dad. I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have felt like but I’m glad that pain he was feeling is no more.
From being my manager to my business partner, writer, book editor, artistic director, and most importantly, my friend, I am going to miss you MC Krispy E a.k.a “Enrique Pollazo!” And although you told me Enrique means Henry in Spanish and not Eric, it was too late!
Sidebar. The day I was discharged, while everyone was deciding what was best for me, no one had remembered that I would need clothes in order to leave the hospital. Eric shows up (unasked) with all the clothes I had on the day I coded, laundered and ready to go. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve friends like this but i need to keep doing it! Sidebar complete.
Rest in Peace Eric. “Be Good.”
