It’s strange how much the internet distorts things. If I listened to the internet, black people hate and resent me and want me to be put in my place for my crimes. But as a churchgoer and neighbor and parent and employer and owner of an ice cream store, black people are just people like everyone else and are perfectly delightful and we all get along wonderfully. Is it possible that the internet is just the home of the worst people of every kind, because better people are busy being out in life? Or does it just bring out the worst in us? Perhaps there are particularly good people in the places I frequent. And I try to avoid the internet, since it seems to attract the wrong crowd.
I never thought anything of black people, except that they were just another variety of people, of which there were lots, and as good or bad and as competent or not competent or as friendly and not friendly as anyone else. Being black wasn’t a super big deal, and didn’t tell you much about anyone invididually or what they were like or what their attitudes were. It was something, but other things mattered a lot more. And I kept thinking that my whole life, moving to different cities, knowing different people, hiring different people, working with different people, meeting different people at work or church ro school or in shops or around the neighborhood. Right up until about three years ago.
Then suddenly people started saying it was literally the most important thing and told you everything about people. Up until then, I don’t think “black people” existed in my mind as a category with a lot of content in it. I didn’t think it contained essential moral knowledge about any individuals. It was tertiary. Now it was being sold as primary. And I’ve always disliked people who took some part of their identity and made it into an overwhelming central pillar. Men who were all about being men and being manly. Americans who were all about being American. Women who were all about being women and whatever that meant to them. Reducing identity to sex or color always seemed to confining and always seemed to involve people turning their lives into a kind of formulaic performance, where everything was predictably about and filtered through that one thing. And I always found such performances tiresome and dull and lacking in depth and stimulation. I’m sure those things meant a lot to those people. I could just never get invested in seeing people that way.
Making Nobody Happy 