A Night in Roger

A few days ago me and my soulmate Charlé (whose facebook you should definitely check out, if you are not blocked) arrived in the lovely Rogers Park after spending the day binge eating in Wicker Park. Charlé found herself on a mission to get “Hot Chips”, so we embarked on a quick journey to the convenience store across from her building. As we approached the gas station, a car whizzed by and we heard a “YEW HABBA ANDY WEEEEEEN”.

I gave an honest look of confusion to Charlé, who responded with the look of “Oh, no these bitches didn’t”.

And then we heard it again, repeated as if we had misunderstood.

“WEEEEED! You Have any WEEEEED”.

A gaggle of super friendly white girls (who were obviously underclassmen from Northwestern) were hunting for the herb, and what better place to find it than the blackest part of Rogers Park.

I have dreadlocks, and Charlé has that hairpiece, so we clearly look like drug dealers, or perhaps the brown tint in our skin gave that away?

My jaw dropped. And my jaw NEVER drops. The last time that happened was when O-Town performed at the Miss Teen USA Pageant Show, and that was because I was legitimately shocked. (I mean how could they? But that is a tangent not worth getting into.)

This was a DIFFERENT type of shock. I gave a nervous laugh and a quick frown of offense as Charlé noted the the sitch with her trademark, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

We walked into the store. I lost my appetite, and Charlé found herself settling for Extra Hot Chips as opposed to the Regular Hot Chips she had grew to love and adore. We both were a little disappointed, but we were all too familiar with the routine of just “dealing” with situations like this. You encounter someone behaving in a negative racist fashion and have no choice but to pull a Martin Luther, and react passively. The reaction you feel you should have, regardless of the justifications, becomes somewhat pointless because it doesn’t guarantee that the culprit will change his or her ways.

So whose at fault?

The black people who are selling drugs in the neighborhood?

Or the white students who honestly believe its okay to shop for marijuana by yelling at people in predominately black neighborhoods like their pets doing doing tricks?

I spent too much time thinking about an answer for this. And then I realized that I should be thankful that this happened to us.

Because now I know WHY I wanted to get a degree,

now I know why I articulate and use diction when I speak,

now I know why I spend my days trying to better myself,

now I know why I fight for an impossible career,

now I know why I choose to not be another statistic.

I’ve spent most of my childhood being an outcast and not having very many friends because I wasn’t black enough. And I have a lot of friends with similar stories… One, I think we should work towards redefining what it means to be black (or any race for that matter) for future generations, and two, we should work towards understanding racism.

Many people give racism an evil connotation as if being racist is satanic. It’s not. Racism has many different forms. Here, it was a very ignorant form. On my facebook profile, it is a comedy routine. On our campuses, it’s mostly not understanding how to treat people equally. If you have never been around different groups of people, no one should expect you NOT to treat them differently. You are American, and if you were not raised in an environment where everyone is viewed as equal you either develop or learn ways to deal with diversity.

I am discovering that some people want to live in LALA land. The magical place where racism doesn’t apply to you and so long as you don’t aggressively call someone a name or infringe on their civil rights you are in the clear. Well, in reality, these are the people who are politicians overlooking the less fortunate. These are the people in exclusive clicks who dare not venture out. These are the people who believe that dating someone out of their race is a fetish. These are the people putting weed drive-bys on the map.

The road goes both ways. People of all races have difficulty dealing with diversity.

So, please, for the love of Hot Chips and O-Town:

- Know where you stand.

- Be conscience of how you might offend or hurt people.

- Take responsibility, change or evaluate, and move on.

Notice! I am not saying NOT TO BE RACIST. But merely suggesting that you own up to your actions.

Those girls are going to pay what they owe!