Come the Stones

Pretty Lady has said it before, but unaccountably, no-one has stoned her. She suspects it is because they didn't believe her; or, more likely, they weren't paying attention. So she will say it again. Pretty Lady is racist. Racist, racist, racist. A veritable bigot. Prejudicial, jingoistic, agoraphobic, narrow-minded, unempathic, and uninterested in the problems of others.

Just so we're clear.

Perhaps the reason that no heavy, jagged objects have yet emerged through Pretty Lady's windows, despite the above confession, is that she lives in New York City. She has often noticed that native New Yorkers, of any color or creed, are up-front about their bigotry. Naive as she is, she had never heard the term 'towel-head,' used to describe a cab driver of Islamic extraction, before moving here. She had not been the subject of open contempt, due to her inferior goy nature, from a gentleman wearing a top hat and side curls. She was unaware that, in certain quarters, the expression 'stoopid f***ing Pollacks' is standard, particularly when referring to the wiring schemata of formerly Pole-occupied apartments.

Despite this pervasive racial pejoration, however, the streets of New York seem remarkably free of riots, marches, sit-ins and Unfortunate Incidents. In fact, in Pretty Lady's psychically sensitive experience, the level of Fraught Tension is considerably lower than her experience of the liberal, progressive, Consciousness Raised Bay Area, where she spent a good many of her formative years.

For in New York City, a group of young black males boarding the train is simply a group of young black males boarding the train. In the Bay Area, a group of young black males boarding the bus is an opportunity for all of us to Remain Calm, Now, and not get all anxious that this group of young men who are not necessarily thugs is about to Cause Trouble, no, we mustn't jump to conclusions, despite their downright aggressive demeanor, and the fact that one of them just swiped your wallet.

Indeed, in the liberal, progressive Bay Area, nobody is racist at all. Everybody has a black friend, an Asian friend, and a Hispanic friend, and they all walk down the street together. Everybody is exactly the same; the same age, the same socioeconomic bracket, with the same interests and pastimes and vegetarian tendencies. Only skin color varies. Everybody is bisexual, too.

(These liberal, progressive, homogeneous Bay Area attitudes are very stringently enforced; anybody who deviates from them by so much as a whisper, however misinterpreted, is universally ostracized without explanation and never mentioned again. Pretty Lady can't fathom how those Rodney King riots ever took place. )

Perhaps the reason that New York retains its veneer of abrasive intolerance is that in New York, there are simply too many races to keep track of. To be properly non-racist in New York, one would have to have an Ethiopian friend, a Nigerian friend, a Hasidic friend, a French friend, an Irish friend, an Orthodox friend, a Polish friend, a Russian friend, a Puerto Rican friend, an Ecuadoran friend, a Syrian friend, an Iranian friend, an Afghani friend, a Slovakian friend, a Cuban friend, a Japanese friend, a Chinese friend, a Filipino friend, a Thai friend, a Hindu friend, and an Indonesian friend. People's schedules are simply too busy for maintaining all these friends, not to mention the cost of all those language classes. It is much easier to remain insular and unenlightened.

Surprisingly, however, everybody gets along, most of the time. Perhaps this is because we all have to work so hard just to pay the rent. Economic desperation transcends mere bigotry; New Yorkers, by and large, are able to say "I don't like your kind, but maybe we can work together."

In fact, it is Pretty Lady's inchoate theory that 1) deep down, we are all racist, for the very good reason that survival of the species demands that we be wary of funny-looking strangers; and 2) racism suppressed does far more damage than racism openly and cheerfully expressed. When a person is busy defending herself against charges of bigotry, however justified, this allows little energy left over for actually getting to know people, in an open, honest, organic way.