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Yakkity Yak, Don’t Go Back
This weekend, the Special Lady Friend and I headed over the mountains to visit a friend of hers. This friend, who was born and raised in Seattle, has been having a tough time adjusting to the cultural wasteland that is Yakima, where she recently moved for a job. She invited us out there to keep her company for a couple of days. (The fact that the Yakima Valley Spring Barrel wine tasting festival just happened to fall on this very weekend is entirely coincidental.) On Saturday, the friend and her boyfriend chartered a van to drive our drunken asses around to all the vineyards we would be visiting.
And in this van, something happened that sets my teeth gnashing every time I think about.
In addition to the four of us, several of the boyfriend’s business partners were riding to the wine tasting. Upon being introduced to us as we entered the van, one of them asked the Special Lady Friend where she had gone to school and what she did for a career. When she replied that she had gone to Seattle Central Community College, he asked “how did you go there and avoid getting shivved?” (Note: SCCC is located in one of Seattle’s most racially diverse neighborhoods and has a large number of African-American students.)
This was rather offensive, but the SLF pressed on, pretending she hadn’t heard it and informing the guy that she had gone there to get her degree in interpreting. Whereupon, this asshole, a man we had met less than thirty seconds before, replied:
“Is your degree in interpreting Ebonics?”
Oh, and incidentally, the woman we had driven to Yakima to visit, whom this jackass had also never met before, and who was sitting less than five feet away, is black.
I was flabberghasted, as was the SLF. Had we actually heard what we just heard? What kind of brainless nitwit makes “wink wink, nudge nudge” racist jokes to people he’s just met? When we reached the winery, the SLF told her friend and the friend’s boyfriend what had been said, and they confronted the bozo. He assured us all that he had “lots of black friends.” I certainly didn’t believe him, but if he was telling the truth, hopefully those black friends don’t trust him too much.
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