All Apologies!
for my crime of noticing
I’ve been here an hour at this cool coffee place in Missoula, not far from the university. I know I’m not supposed to notice, and it’s kind of a heresy to mention it, but the place is packed and, well…- everyone is white.
What’s the heresy in noticing the demographics of a roomful of people, you ask.
It’s because I indicated first that I liked the place, calling it ‘cool’. You cannot connect good and all white in polite conversation! Here is how I would have helped my daughter rephrase the above paragraph to suit her grad-student, English-composition teacher at Oberlin College, if a good grade were the only goal: The coffee wasn’t bad and the décor was pleasant enough, if a little 80’s kitsch, but something just wasn’t right here. I felt an unnerving discomfort. Then it hit me like the shock of ice-cold water to the face: The patrons, every single one of them, were stiflingly lily white!
You think people aren’t programmed to talk this way? Here’s Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, an Irish politician, speaking before parliament about his delight with the influx of 3rd worlders into fast-disappearing Ireland.
What a putz. Who is paying him to say this stuff? Can you imagine rejecting the idea of a trip to County Cork because it’s “white and pasty”?
Imagine walking the cobblestone streets of Mallow or Macroom and hearing this conversation:
-Hey Bob, look- the Golden Harp Pub. Should we try this place? It sounds like they have a live band in there! How about a Guinness and some good Irish music? Whattya say, Bob?
-Nah, it’s probably all white. Let’s look around for something more diverse.
In a few years pointing out that a nice place is all white will be called a notice crime. The Borg will know my thoughts and I’ll have to go before O’Brien and confess.
Quit exaggerating, you say. OK, maybe I am, but crikey, turn on the TV or just look at the advertising in the junk mail and you never see such homogeneity as you do in this coffee place. I don’t watch TV normally but if I’m having a beer or burger at the bar and grill I can’t help noticing the 24/7 sports stream. You know the advertising requirements- all gatherings are multi-cultural; all marriages are biracial; and the country is 53% black. (Oh yeah- and the white dude is a bonehead.) This situation at University Coffee should be impossible, according to our betters who manufacture consent on TV and Youtube ads.
The same phenomenon occurred in the valley a couple weeks ago. I popped into the Sunset Cafe in Hamilton for a quick bite. I love that place as it has the old homespun feel of the classic American diner. I sat at the counter in the red swivel stool, ordered coffee and the soup of the day with a roll and pulled out a book. Between chapters I put the book down and had a look around. There were some interesting things: ol’ regular-customer Fred next to me at the counter, who preferred to discuss today’s options with the waitress rather than look at the menu; my mom-like, friendly waitress who came by again and again, asking if I wanted a coffee refill; the table behind me with the boisterous kids running around and the grandparents who were having an ordeal trying to control them; the other veteran waitress with lots of tats on the arms and a phone with the same ringer as mine; the long-hair, baseball-cap, tough-guy looking dishwasher who came out to get some ice and water out of the fountain-drinks machine; the young and pretty, towhead blonde bus girl who kept checking her phone to see what dreamboat Ethan was texting her; the slightly older, dirty-blonde with a more mature, experienced/bored expression, and a giant hickey on her neck; etc.
And then it struck me. From my position on the end of the counter I could see every customer, every waitress, and every kitchen worker (I had a view into the kitchen so the cooks were visible and you saw the dishwasher come out now and then to stack plates in the cabinet under the counter). To the eternal shame of Ravalli County, every single person in that restaurant was white!
To paraphrase Barbara Lerner Spectre, at this point Montana has not learned to be multicultural.
If the cameras weren’t rolling, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin would probably enjoy the excellent soup and service at the Sunset just as much as me, cooked up and served by the dull, white, pasty workers of Hamilton, Montana. Then again, I doubt he’d enjoy himself much. He’d probably pretend to himself that the place lacked vibrancy. The waitresses at the Sunset can sniff out a phony pretty fast and he’d likely get the cold shoulder.
My home town of Seattle is much more advanced and on the right track, as far as Barbara Lerner Specter is concerned.
Should it matter? I have a Canadian buddy who says, “Who cares what color we are? Some day we’ll all be coffee color and what’s wrong with that?”
There’s nothing wrong with coffee-colored people. I’m still hoping to brush up on my Portuguese and go to Brazil some day. Heck, my half-Japanese kids look coffee colored and I’m fairly fond of them. I’m just saying I like the diversity of races and cultures, and I don’t think there’s any crime in the existence of a mono-culture here and there, even a white one, heaven forbid. Think about it- Having mono-race countries/cultures around the world means variety! Borders, and distinct races and cultures is pro-diversity, obviously. The borderless, world melting pot is anti-diversity.
Would you prefer to go to Paris and see blonde Sandrine in a beret or feel more like you’re walking the streets of Nairobi? Would you want to go to Birmingham and meet up with Paul and Nigel for a pint at the Old Ram or get the sense that you’ve become lost in an Islamabad bazaar? Too late if in both cases you answered the former; Sandrine, Paul and Nigel have long since escaped the urban vibrance and are laying low in the provinces, until they fall too.
The cultural equivalent of everyone with coffee-colored skin is everyone eating the same food, dressing alike, and listening to the same music. I was pretty excited when I learned that my town in Japan would be getting a Costco. Yip-dee-ding: now my kids could get $1 all-you can drink Mountain Dew from the machine, and I could buy a few tasty foods for cheap- but at what price? The old Japanese shopping experience- everyone nicely dressed, especially the women; everything packaged so carefully; people only eating when sitting down at a table; super-helpful employees everywhere; tasteful decoration; meticulous and clever window displays, etc. is still there, but judging by the size of the crowds most people in Japan as everywhere would now prefer the ‘murican experience at Costco. Over the years the look of the average Costco shopper in Japan has gotten more sloppy, in both dress and manner (and girth, thanks to the cheap pizza and pop).
Recently I heard a writer I know say that people should go back to ethnic dress. I know folks around the world would rather be casual like Americans, but as a travel nut, I think it’s a fantastic idea. Would you rather go to Mexico and see the ladies in long, white dresses with green and red frill, or look at skin-tight, spandex-over-blubber pants and a t-shirt that says something the woman can’t even read, like Worlds Meanest Bitch? (Sorry- I only mention that because it’s actually a t-shirt I saw on a customer at the Super-1. Why would she wear that?)
It’s rich that my Canadian friend speaks positively of the world where we’re all gonna be some shade of café au lait. He could have had his coffee with milk if he wanted to, but he didn’t. I met him in Japan, where he still lives. He didn’t go to teach English in café com leite Brazil, or café con leche Venezuela, but Japan, the most mono-culture/race place in the world. Granted, like me, by marrying an Asian he ended up with latino looking kids, whom he loves dearly, but when he sent his daughter to Canada for university, did he send her to a vibrant place with all the colorful people of the earth like Vancouver or Toronto? Heck no, Frank sent her to Saskatchewan, the whitest province in Canada. Admit it, Frank, one of the reasons you sent her to Saskatchewan is because it’s huwhite!
It’s not just advertisers and kooky politicians that have to pretend white is bad. Look at this:
OK, someone who is fighting the closure of these dams is using these nice visuals to enhance her presentation. She probably googled the images and put them in her Powerpoint. Now look at the next one:
Yes, that’s exactly the kind of kids you see when you visit the rural zone along the Snake River, west of Lewiston, Idaho. Probably our clean energy activist did a google image search and was too rushed to have to scroll down for the first image of kids of the same demographic of this part of the northwest, i.e. white (a photo of sad Ukranian kids in a Russian orphanage). I tried that search and every group of kids was either multi-ethnic or in some cases all-African.
Why do I mention all this? I don’t know. I guess I’m just feeling a bit un-PC by enjoying my time in this demographically-incorrect coffee house in Missoula, and I hate the lies of advertising and the agenda, so I thought I’d type up my thoughts. I hope you’ll forgive me.
That’s all; my phone is ringing inside my rucksack. The tattoo waitress looks my way. “Same ring tone,” I say.
“Yeah, you me and everyone else,” she says without looking my way. She keeps talking as she walks away, approaching the cash register, and I can just barely make out her saying, “I’m too lazy to change it!”
I’m "multicultural" as I have spent a great deal of my adult life in Japan after half of a lifetime in the USA. Oh, and I have the "half n half" children badge. But I still understand the ultimate power of "tribes". I’m pretty certain that if TSHTF in Japan and resources were scarce, my pasty white face would not be as welcome and "included" as it appears to be now. No, the tribe, whatever tribe, would look out for its own. Has it ever been different?
😔