The Rake Magazine

Category: Columns

  • Boo! Made You Look …

    What does the boogeyman look like? For most Americans (even, I suspect, some of the darker ones), he’s probably big and black. The scary black man is an image older than the Republic and more enduring than apple pie and Chevrolet. The image of gangs running amok, snatching up women and anything else not nailed down, has fueled everything from D.W. Griffith’s notorious The Birth of a Nation to last month’s Hurricane Katrina media coverage, where blacks were described as “looters” while whites were merely making use of things they had “found.”

    Black families have always understood that the best way to protect their menfolk from those who would harm them was to minimize the “scary” factor. I grew up in the sixties and early seventies, a time when many white Americans believed that the only things standing between them and hordes of scary black men were guns, tough cops, and a rigidly enforced system of racial segregation. When my family moved to lily-white southeast Denver in 1968, we knew we were entering alien, hostile territory. Therefore, my parents did all they could to make me the antithesis of the scary black man.

    The stereotypical scary black boy (who of course grows into the scary black man) is anti-social, anti-work, anti-school, and lusts after white women. So I learned to say “yes sir” to adults. I got my first job when I was thirteen. I caught hell if I dared to bring home less than stellar grades, and I was taught that the quickest route to “seeing the devil’s pitchfork” lay between a pair of white female thighs. My parents showed me not only the way to success—through hard work and respect for others—but also how to avoid scaring white people.

    Yet, growing up, I found that following the rules did little to assuage white fears. It was not what I did, but who I was—my mere presence—that made me scary. Still, I resisted accepting that.

    In college, I learned all I could about the genesis of the scary black man. I took Afro-American history courses and pondered the inherent contradictions in owning slaves while espousing religious and political freedom, as the early colonists did. I came to understand that in order to justify brutalizing my forefathers, white people had stereotyped them as fearsome, less-than-human beings, devoid of any hint of “divine spark” and the power it imbued.

    I genuinely wanted to be good, but acting scary toward whites—playing off those long-held stereotypes, even benefiting from them—was tempting. “Going for bad” can be an exhilarating experience. It can, at least in the short term, lessen feelings of disrespect and powerlessness. Therefore, I understand why some African-American men, believing it impossible to fight the assumption that they are scary, decide to pre-empt whites and simply “go there.” At times, it appears to be an attractive offensive option.

    In fact, the expression “don’t make me go there” originated as black slang for “Back off, jack—I’m about to go ‘scary black man’ on you!” Truth be told, I’ve gone there myself. Once, during my sophomore year in college, I was walking through the Boston Common when three or four white townies threatened to jump me. I knew what these guys were capable of. “I’m a crazy black motherf—er!” I yelled. “I love cutting white folks. Y’all wanna be next?” Though they could have taken me out, one muttered, “Leave him be. No telling what this nigger is liable to do.”

    Now, as then, I have used my physical stature, my education, my profession, and yes, my color to get something or gain influence in a particular situation. However, because my profession and education give me options that many African-American males don’t have, I rarely have to “go there.” Would I take the high road as often if I were poor and uneducated?

    A fellow Rake writer recently spoke about a visiting friend who, while riding her bike late at night in South Minneapolis, was accosted by a black man who grabbed the handlebars, looked her dead in the eye, and said, “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you, bitch?” He didn’t rob or touch her. He simply wanted to elicit fear, to feel that rush. I can only imagine how impotent he must feel daily, able to gain power only by terrorizing an innocent white woman.

    What if, by a wave of some magic wand, we could banish the scary black man from our collective psyche? Are we ready for a world where physical appearance is no longer the barometer by which we measure someone’s entitlement to respect and power? Given the recent coverage of Hurricane Katrina, it seems unlikely.

  • Good for the Liver?

    What is it about Americans and guilt? Mr. Bush, it seems, may now be willing to admit that the world is warming up. But he would not have us think that the human race (let alone its industries and motorcars) is in any way responsible. Mustn’t feel bad about it, must we?

    This is strange because the sort of Christianity favored by President Frutex (Latin for Bush, don’t you know) used to be particularly keen to impress on people that all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. Augustine developed the notion of original sin partly from a conviction that the world was actually by nature good (adjust your set, there is no fault in reality). Oliver Cromwell struck a chord with the Puritans of the Rump Parliament when he beseeched them “in the bowels of Christ, that ye may be mistaken.” John Wesley famously felt himself to be a brand plucked from the burning, and generations of evangelical preachers have striven to convince people they are sinners, so that they can then pull the redemption rabbit out of the hat.

    Cromwell’s political successors seem to feel that it is other people who make the mistakes. The axis of evil has moved elsewhere (though the only thing I can see that Iran, Iraq and North Korea have in common is that all three irritate the United States). Of course, politicians are hardly the only ones to deny guilt. We the People do so often, and avidly. I had pupils when I taught in California who seemed simply impervious to the mildest suggestion that a mistake might have been made (which is easy enough when writing Latin sentences); correction, as the Frenchman said, ran off their backs like a duck’s water. The word has even been verbed—as in the accusation, “You are trying to guilt me!”

    Such shunning of a sense of personal error does not ensure universal happiness. The whole horror of modern no-fault divorce is designed to ignore the possibility that sometimes fault is involved. The masterpiece of those who advocate the avoidance of guilt must be the doctrine of passive aggression. This holds that you may employ the patience of Griselda or of Job putting up with my nonsense, but mysteriously it all remains your fault; I am not responsible for the fact that I behave like a bastard.

    Admitting mistakes gives people the chance to put them right. Of course, eating humble pie is not a particularly pleasant pastime. The word “humble” as applied to “pie” does not actually derive from anything to do with humility; it comes from the same root as lumbar (as in lumbar pain), and the humbles (or numbles) of a deer are its innards. All the same, humble pie is the opposite of a delicacy, even if it was a dinner as familiar in the Middle Ages as haggis and chips in modern Scotland.

    Innards are something else Americans have difficulty with. All right, not everyone savors the scrunch of prairie oysters or the sliminess of cervelle. Cockneys can keep my share of tripe and onions. But heart cooked long enough (it is, after all, quite a tough muscle) is, well, heartening, and grilled kidneys on fried bread is one of the most toothsome breakfasts I know. Perhaps the best bargain at the butchers round here is liver. (Is life worth living? That depends on the liver.) Cut thin, dust with flour, salt and mustard powder, then fry fast with bacon and onions—it is one of the few cuts of meat that gets tougher the longer you cook it—and anoint with the pan scrapings transformed into sauce. The gritty flavor of liver is the perfect accompaniment for spinach cooked quickly in butter.

    And a good wine for both liver and spinach together is a red from California that is tough enough to take on any taste (even haggis). Better still, it sells for only about eighteen dollars locally. The 2003 DeLoach California Pinot Noir, from the Russian River valley north of San Francisco, is bright and honest. There is at first a sweetness and flowery charm, but then a delightful roar, as determined as a motorcycle engine, develops in the back of the throat. The sweetness turns into fine strong tannins and, as the wine goes down, aroma rises through the nose. This is wine that engages the attention on every level, like a really worthwhile woman; it has both immediate appeal and depth. But the real beauty of combining it with liver and spinach is the resulting symphony of bitternesses. Who knows, a patient appreciation of these may even make you sorry for your sins.

  • Happy to Oblige, Ma’am!

    I was at a garden center the other day, looking to score some indigenous weed for my front boulevard garden. That tall fall grass, you know. Zone Five hardy, tight buds, premium stuff. Anyhow, I was standing in the aisle, surveying the goods, when this completely irate woman charged at me.

    She was waving a section of newspaper, red faced, whisper screaming, and ramped up to warp speed. It was so shocking, all I could do was stare blankly at her. It took me a full thirty seconds to figure out what she was so enraged about—which was a misprinted price in a sale circular. Not only that, but she was going to make damn sure that I made right on it, and in her favor, too! No way was I going to bilk her out of two dollars! Huh?

    Then the warm sunshine of understanding permeated my fog of confusion, as I looked down at my weekend errand outfit of choice that day: khaki skirt, faded lilac polo shirt.

    As soon as I figured out that this public dressing-down was a simple case of mistaken identity, I tried to get a word in edgewise with the roasted nutjob. I tried to say: “I’m sorry! You have mistaken me for a purple-and-tan-garbed employee of this establishment!” When I couldn’t fit that in between her ragged breaths, I tried something shorter: “I don’t work here!”

    Alas, the Crazed Complainer had perceived my initial stunned silence for guilt at being caught in the act of flagrant gladioli bulb price gouging. By then, a small but excited crowd of eavesdroppers had gathered. They could smell the blood of the unfashionably smocked. Years of petty consumer grievances had whipped this bunch into a posse of persnickety purchasers. The crowd drew closer as the ranting continued, eager to witness the ultimate reward for the practiced grumbler, the apex of achievement for the professional complainer: that is, getting sumthin’ fer nuthin’.

    Now. In my life, I’ve done my share of taking complaints from the general public. Me and them. Mano à mano. At the tender age of sixteen, I handled angry phone calls to the Pioneer Press circulation department. I was powerless. All I could do was listen to their bullsnit and log their complaint into the computer. But a lot of the callers needed the drama of a heated exchange with a department head. I worked the night shift, and everybody who was important was gone by then. So I would say, “Just a minute, let me get my manager.” I’d put the phone down for a few seconds, clear my throat, then get back on the line with a different voice and a made-up name and talk them down. Quite a few times I promised to fire that smart-assed Colleen.

    So anyway, I had been standing there with the crazy lady amid the bloodthirsty spectators long enough for the “flight” response to drain away. In its wake came a delicious, stronger rush of adrenaline. My heels dug into the linoleum. George Thorogood power chords cranked in my cerebellum. I settled my face into the kind of patient, insincere smile passed down to me by the ancient shift managers who came before me, the smile that says both “How can I help you?” and “Tough toenail!”

    At this point, the woman had been blathering at me for four solid minutes. She saw me engage the Smile of Polite Indifference and raised the stakes with an immediate Call to a Higher Up. “I can see that I’m getting nowhere with you!” she snapped. “I think we should go have a talk with your manager! What’s your name?!”

    “Colleen, ma’am.” She smiled back at me, sickly sweet. She took the bait. “Okay, Colleen. Why don’t we go talk to your manager together?”

    “Sounds good!” I chirped.

    When we got to the help desk, she located a manager and started the rant all over again, jabbing her finger in my direction from time to time. The manager listened, employing his own version of The Smile.

    When the woman finished, he agreed to give her the price on the circular. The woman’s eyes blazed in triumph. In the heat of victory, she couldn’t resist a parting shot. She snatched the discount slip out of the manager’s hand and said, “You should train your employees in customer service! This woman was very rude to me!”

    She stood there, hoping for the manager to say something to me. It took a second, all of us, standing there looking at each other. Then the guy registered the colors of my outfit. And he started to laugh.

  • An Imported Force

    Minneapolis gets high marks for its “quality of life,” but the home addresses of its cops tell a different story. According to police insiders, less than ten percent of Minneapolis’ police force lives within city limits. Mayor R.T. Rybak and would-be mayor Hennepin County Commish Peter McLaughlin both claim they want more cops living in the city, but think it’s better to make it happen with the carrot (financial incentives) rather than the stick (no residency, no job). Neither believes the “political will” exists to revive a residency requirement, but it’s worth noting that their assessments are based on feedback from the very groups that oppose residency—i.e., public employees such as the cops and their suburban allies in the Legislature.

    In 1993, north Minneapolis DFLer Richard Jefferson convinced his initially skeptical state Legislature colleagues to allow Minneapolis and St. Paul to require that their public employees live in the cities they served. Jefferson argued that residency would shore up the municipal tax base and keep city employees—particularly police officers—from appearing as mercenaries who took their money and their stabilizing presence home to the suburbs every night. But by 1999, the Minneapolis Police Federation succeeded in getting it repealed, with the help of a group of largely suburban legislators, led by former state senator and Minneapolis police captain Rich Stanek. Stanek says several Minneapolis City Council members, allegedly facing recruiting problems and city worker opposition, wanted to deep-six the residency requirement even before the Legislature did, but, fearing a grass-roots backlash, they lost their nerve.

    When I asked McLaughlin if he thought Minneapolis should lobby the Legislature to reinstate the authority, he replied that doing so “would be a misplaced use of the city’s political capital.” Rybak supports the “concept” of a residency requirement, adding, “The presence of cops living in the city does create a greater sense of community and makes everyone feel safer.” But he also said he would rather focus on diversifying the department, starting with outreach at inner-city high schools.

    Rybak’s unspoken assumption—that recruiting black and brown city kids means they will live in the city after they become cops—is probably wrong. According to Sgt. Charlie Adams, head of the Minneapolis Black Police Officers Association, virtually none of Minneapolis’ forty-eight or so black cops live in the city. He himself left north Minneapolis for Brooklyn Park four years ago. “I grew up in the city, loved it, and used to be all for residency,” he said. “When I lived in North Minneapolis, however, I had to teach my kids to hit the ground when they heard gunfire. Now I don’t have to worry about things like that. Furthermore, I like the fact that I am relatively anonymous up here. My biggest problem is figuring out which neighbor’s dog pooped in my yard. And that suits me just fine.” With a bit of prodding, Adams admitted that in the suburbs he could live “incognegro,” safely insulated from the Minneapolitan expectations that he be at the community’s beck and call 24/7.

    Let’s face it—the majority of people living in the metropolitan area are suburbanites. Should cops be penalized for having similar residential preferences?

    Minneapolis City Council Member Natalie Johnson Lee is not terribly sympathetic to the anonymity argument. She believes that a critical mass of police officers must live in the city before cops can truly become a part of the “fabric of our community.” She makes no bones that getting cops “24/7” is one of the primary reasons she supports both a residency requirement and a fight to renew Minneapolis’ authority to impose it.

    I’m with Johnson Lee on this one. Commuting in for an eight-hour shift and then checking out may be acceptable for average citizens, including other public employees, but cops are part of a gun-carrying, arrest-making quasi-military force. Along with these powers, cops have a special responsibility to really know and understand the citizens that they have pledged “to serve and protect.” Ask anyone who has lived in a college dorm, served in the military, or spent three weeks at Camp Gitcheegumee—living among people from different cultures breaks down stereotypes and builds trust, the key piece in establishing a real community. In a city where, rightly or wrongly, many minority citizens do not trust the police, I know that I’m more likely to trust someone if he’s committed enough to my community to share in its joys and challenges 24/7.

  • Water of Life

    Every time I take the boat down Stranraer Sound, I think of Saint Brendan. A Celtic monk, Brendan set sail toward the setting sun with fourteen of his confreres in a whimsical endeavor to find the Island of the Promise of the Saints. Spoilsports (i.e., my academic colleagues) tell you his charming tale is an allegory for the development of the soul, like Pilgrim’s Progress. If so, then what, one wonders, is symbolized by the whale called Iasconius, whose back the monks mistake for an island where they can light a bonfire and cook up fish stew? Silly sooth, I would say.

    Saint Brendan was sailing away from Ireland into what we call the Atlantic, whereas Stranraer is the dour wee burgh on the bottom left-hand corner of Scotland, from which you get the car ferry across the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland. The town is emphatically unromantic, though the corrugated countryside behind it, the land of Sir Walter Scott’s “Old Mortality,” is appealingly wet and green, and the inlet down which you sail after leaving the harbor is lined with long, low hills that feel they might well be the last of land before you pass, like Turner’s Fighting Témeraire, over the edge of the world.

    In Saint Brendan’s time there were, of course, other, more deadly sailors trekking westward. The Vikings got to Minnesota a bit later (1961, according to the team history), but they were certainly in Newfoundland a thousand years ago, where they lived in a seaside settlement now called L’Anse aux Meadows. If you fly Icelandair back from Europe, not only will you find that Iceland (at the right time of year) is green and Greenland is covered with snow, but you will see the rippling gray whaleroad in between them that they rowed over, laid out like a gelatin print.

    Less adventurous Vikings got no further than the hills of the Scotch-English border, where they started families with names like Nicholson and became noted for sheep stealing and cattle theft. They still sing ballads in the border country about the most vicious of these “reivers”: “My name is wee Jock Elliot and wha’ daur meddle wi’ me’” (in English, “who dares meddle with me”; and in straight Latin, “nemo me impune lacessit”).

    When James VI of Scots became James I of England in 1603, he started to dream up schemes to make his kingdoms a touch more prosperous—Jamestown in Virginia was one of the less lucrative enterprises he chartered. Introducing a market economy to Northern Ireland was one that paid better (though, of course, at the expense of the Gaelic population). Among those transplanted from southern Scotland across the narrow sea to northern Ireland were quite a number of the vigorous folk who had made life on the Scotch-English border so exciting in earlier days, when men were men and sheep were afraid.

    Some of the settlers moved on further during the next few generations, especially to the more southerly of the Thirteen Colonies of North America. But plenty stayed. Like their Scottish ancestors, the Protestant settlers in Ulster had a talent for distillation. No surprise, then, that they soon got into the whiskey business (whiskey with an ”e” because it’s Irish). The first license to distill in the northern tip of Ireland, in the area around Bushmills in County Antrim, was granted in 1608. The present Bushmills business, which claims to be the oldest distillery in the world, is first mentioned in 1783. Nowadays it produces several different whiskies: a standard blend of malt and grain (Bushmills Original, with a white label); various single malts; and a superior blend called Black Bush.

    Black Bush is the one I like best, and can be had for less than $30 locally. It is mostly malt whiskey with a certain amount of grain whiskey to lighten the taste (not that it is as light as Cutty Sark and other blends of Scotch popular in the United States). It also has real bite—though, like Irish whiskey in general, it is innocent of the reek of peat that makes connoisseurs of Laphroaig, the Islay malt from the Scotch side of the water, gasp for air. Having been thrice distilled (unusual, though not unique), Bushmills is clean and clear. There are no frills, no superfluous sweetness. It must be something like this they drink in the Island of the Promise of the Saints.

  • Dirty Laundry, Clean House

    I was chatting on the phone the other day with an old buddy, someone I haven’t seen for at least eight years. Lives change, people drift apart, you know how it is. About an hour and a half into this gossip-a-thon, I remembered the reason why this friend and I drifted apart. All we ever did together was talk about other people. Frankly, it made me feel dirty. But I couldn’t get off the phone.

    This next part sounds terribly selfish, and it probably was. But hear me out. The other thing I remembered about this old friend is that I used to call her when I had housework to do. I am not what you’d call a natural housekeeper. I get the work done all right, but I need distractions while I do it. When I was fourteen and had to clean my room, a kick-ass Hall and Oates album would do the trick. (Don’t judge, only love.) As a young mother, it was Phil Donahue or early, pre-Optifast Oprah. (I never quite stooped to the level of Jerry Springer.)

    But back when this gal and I were running with the same crowd, I’d think nothing of bellying up to a full sink of dirty dishes with a 3M scrubby sponge in one hand, a casserole that looked like the underside of an off-road four-wheeler in the other, and the telephone receiver wedged under my chin. My friend would get the ball rolling by dishing about her co-workers, and we’d yammer on, all up in everybody’s business, as they say. Next thing I knew, it would be a couple of hours later. When I hung up the phone, I had a sparkling sink, folded laundry, a crick in my neck, and a nasty case of ring around the karma. Take it from somebody who knows, you can try scrubbing, you can try soaking, you can try spraying. But really, the only thing that’s going to clean your soul in those hard-to-reach problem areas is minding your own business.

    Still, during this recent conversation, I found myself wondering—while also listening raptly and shaking out the lint trap—“Is it technically considered gossip if I haven’t the slightest idea who she is talking about? I mean, come on. She’s living in a different state, with a whole new set of dysfunctional friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Anonymous accounts of workaday backstabbing, tenuous marital emotional underpinnings, and bedroom scandals galore, starring people I will never meet—this could be a golden opportunity. The residents of this faraway South Carolina suburb will unknowingly offer their daily lives to entertain and horrify, thrill, and enthrall me as my own personal soap opera.”

    I have to tell you, I was of two minds. They sounded like this: Ick! Yes. Ick! Yes. I was on the road to hell, paved with highly polished linoleum floors and salacious tittle-tattle. Ultimately, my prurience gave in to shame—but that doesn’t mean I sacrificed domestic sanitation. These days, it’s most often an audio book or some talk radio that gets me through my chores. Jim Dale’s seventeen-cassette unabridged performance of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was enough to empty a five-year accumulation of trash out my garage, organize my tool shed, and sweep approximately three quarts of mice poops out of my attic. At least I think they were mice poops. I don’t remember spilling any caraway seeds up there.

    That’s not to say my life is now gossip-free. The appetite for this kind of dirt is encoded in the human genome. These days, however, I prefer to focus on people who are well compensated for their humiliation. Soap-opera actresses, pop divas, celebutantes, Larry King. In June, a photojournalists’ exhibition in New York featured pictures of famous people’s garbage bins. “Found objects,” they call ’em in the art world. The CNN interviewer’s receptacle contained adult undergarments, and I’m not talking about suspenders worn beneath a suit coat. King’s people denied the Man-Huggies were his. Maybe it was a prank by one of his eleventy ex-wives. Whatever. The point is, no matter what mortifying things people say about Larry King, he’s still paid millions to yak on TV. In his world, a dash of notoriety is just the thing to jack up your ratings. When a tabloid ran a photo of Kirstie Alley bent over while putting groceries in her SUV’s trunk, and captioned it “Kirstie Loads Up Her Back End,” she parlayed the attention to land a TV series, a book contract, and a Jenny Craig endorsement deal. When we gossip about people like that, we’re doing them a favor. Guilt doesn’t even enter into it. Ask Katie Holmes.

  • Naming in Vain

    If you casually mention at a social gathering that you think little boys are more destructive than little girls, most people will probably agree. Even those who do not will probably give scant notice to the fact that you were making assumptions about behavior based on a physical attribute—a practice more commonly known as stereotyping. Now, what if you said something like, “There’s a new boy in my kid’s class named Da’Quan—I bet he’s poor and black.” Assuming you run in a politically correct crowd, you will be called a stereotyper, a racial profiler, or worse.

    Yet whether we openly admit it or not, we do conjure certain images for certain names. I admit that when I hear “Demetrius” or “Marquis,” I do not expect to see a kid with blond hair and blue eyes.

    What’s in a name? Plenty, according to economists Steven Levitt, who is white, and Roland Fryer, who is black. They decided to see if African-Americans with distinctively “black” names like DeShawn or Precious had harder lives than others. The researchers used birth certificate data from the sixteen million children born in California since 1961, including name and gender, along with the parents’ marital status, ZIP code, and education. They discovered that in the early sixties, blacks and whites drew names from the same general pool. With the advent of the black power movement, that quickly changed. In 1970, girls born in black neighborhoods received names that were twice as common among blacks than whites. Today, four out of every ten black girls born in California receive a name that none of a hundred thousand white girls receives. And a third of the black girls born there have a unique name.

    Levitt and Fryer concluded that a person with a distinctively “black” name does indeed have a worse life outcome than a Claire or a Luke. They reasoned that the demographic profile of the parents of uniquely named children—who themselves are unmarried, poor, undereducated teenage mothers with distinctive black names—doomed these kids to lives of poverty. However, they blithely attributed the mothers’ willingness to bestow “black” names as an attempt to show “solidarity” with the black community.

    That may be true, but there is perhaps another factor at play. These young, single mothers cannot give their children the security, education, and material comfort of more successful families. Perhaps bestowing a unique name on their children is a naïve attempt to leave a legacy—an asset, if you will—to kids to whom they can give little else.

    As far as I know, no one has yet analyzed the kinds of names that relatively affluent, educated black parents give their children. Among my family and close African-American friends, there is a Joseph, two Alexanders, and a Quinn, a Brooke, a Carson, a Colin, a Melanie, a Mitchell, and a Johnny. None of their names makes the California top twenty “blackest boy” or “blackest girl” name lists. And, though it may make me sound like an assimilationist, I take comfort in that. I thought long and hard about how my sons’ names would play when they were adults. In fact, I used to joke that they would make a great impression on letterhead, or being read aloud at a college graduation. I did not want their names to broadcast their ethnicity to the world—or camouflage it. I also did not want them to be unfairly judged before they ever recited their first alphabet in class.

    Another study, from the University of Florida researcher David Figlio, confirms what African-American parents have long suspected—that teachers’ expectations of their students are based in part on names. According to Figlio, black students with unusual (i.e. “black”) names are less likely to be placed in gifted programs than black students with more mainstream (read “white”) names. He also found that students with Asian names were more often placed in gifted programs than siblings with similar test scores and common American names.

    In other words, there is an academic pecking order in our schools that appears to be linked to students’ first names, but is really tied to expectations. What self-respecting teacher would admit to doing this? Can you imagine an employer conceding that it screens prospective employees based on their names? There is empirical proof that it does happen—both in education and, according to several resume-screening studies, on the job.

    I think stereotyping based on names is wrong. I also think we all do it. Given that reality, the efforts of poor, single mothers to leave a legacy by giving their children “black” names are sadly misguided. Unwittingly, they are making an already tough road for their kids tougher yet.

  • Shimmering Surfaces

    The three best reasons for being an academic, as is well known, are June, July, and August. Especially on the occasions when the University of Minnesota conspires with the McKnight Foundation to allow one to spend those months reading and writing about a really genial poet for instance, a character from the Later Roman Empire called Ausonius.

    There is a serious side to this enterprise, of course. Ausonius is a wonderful case study of an intelligent Roman who went Christian at around the time most Romans were going Christian, during the fourth century A.D. Watching him integrate ancient science (astrology, for instance) into Christian cosmology is as interesting as considering the relationships between religion and Darwinism. (Am I alone in wanting one of each kind of fish symbol to stick on the back of my car?)
    But there is also a fun side to old Ausonius, something agreeably fin de sircle. Sometimes I fancy I can hear him calling to posterity in the way that James Elroy Flecker appealed to a poet a thousand years hence:

    But have you wine and music still,
    And statues and a bright-eyed love,
    And foolish thoughts of good and ill
    And prayers to them that sit above?

    On one level, then, a poet who promises a summer of roses and wine. Which is as it should be. Roman emperors in those late days lived not at Rome, but on the frontiers of Empire, where they could face down their Germanic neighbors, folk who spoke limited amounts of Latin and smeared butter in their hair instead of scented olive oil (a little dab will do ya). Ausonius was tutor to the son of one such emperor and so spent much of his adult life at Trier on the Moselle, then as now famous for its vineyards. His roots, however, were in Bordeaux, and to this day a well-known wine chateau in Saint-Emilion on the right bank of the Gironde is named Chateau Ausone in his honor (but you know what they say about the wines of Bordeaux—if you have heard of a claret, you can’t afford it).

    For a poet so associated with wine, Ausonius was singularly fascinated with water. Icarus falls into it and Christ walks on it. Ausonius enjoyed looking through and across its shifting, shimmering surfaces since, like many a poet, he was interested in fishing; he was amazed, too, at the speed and ease with which a boat could carry him back and forth between his country villa and the city of Bordeaux. In fact, his longest poem is a dreamy description of the Moselle: The river cuts a canyon through the landscape, barges pass up and down, the bargees exchange badinage with men cultivating the hillsides. And in a contemplative passage, the poet wonders at the way fish cannot breathe out of water, while fishermen cannot breathe in it. I have a theory that Ausonius’ interest in water has to do with his shifting sense of himself, and so with the sort of Christian prayer that formed in his heart as he stood before the Most High God of the philosophers.

    But that is another story. More immediate is the fact that he would certainly recognize the modern Moselle, its vertiginous hillsides still planted with lines of vines and crowned with country mansions. And I feel sure he would enjoy, as I did the other night, a white wine made from the Riesling grape, available locally in the characteristic slim green Moselle bottles at around twelve dollars. (I do not know the exchange rate for denarii, but I do know a good story about a long-haired barbarian chieftain exchanging his daughter for an amphora of Roman wine.)

    This Riesling is the 2001 vintage of Robert Eymael’s Mönchhof estate. The name Mönchhof (monk court) comes from the Cistercians who owned this vineyard from the twelfth till the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon annexed all of this border region for France and the Eymael family acquired the vineyard. The result of this long history of cultivation is a wine that is on the sweet side, but would be pleasant with many sorts of cheese, fish, or poultry. The color is a consistent pale yellow, but each sip recalled a fresh sort of fruit. I thought I had it down as reminding me of pineapple juice when the next mouthful recalled apples.

    Plus ça change, shimmering surfaces indeed. There is also a clear, uncloying aftertaste. What is it about this grape that makes it so infinitely various in its flavors? There’s a question to talk over with Ausonius on an August afternoon.

  • Food Follies

    As a food service industry professional, I sometimes find it difficult to retain my tableside manner. Back in 1986, when I first strapped on my apron at Mickey’s Diner, I took the Oath of Hypocrisy: Never, ever, under any circumstances let those you serve know what you think of them.

    I’m good at what I do because of this rule, and also because I tend to like most people, even when they are crabby and need French fries with a side of red bell mayo and Stoli lemonades to calm their colic. It makes me feel good to have a snarling, capri-panted, kitten-heeled Eaganite click-clock to a table, fully loaded with the day’s frustrations and ready to blow—only to see her sheath her claws and start purring when I deliver a hot basket of bread. Likewise for the fifty-five-year-old Grumpy Gus who needs a blooming onion and a Michelob Golden Light—stat! Hey, man, have at it. It’s your breath, and it’s your funeral.

    A perk of working in the food service industry is the feast of conversation that I overhear each night. True, most of it is fragmented sound bites unburdened by context. I think of these snippets as appetizers in relation to the smorgasbord of banter that I share with my esteemed colleagues in culinary service. And lately, each shift has been looking and sounding uncannily like a feature-length version of that classic joke: “A man walks into a bar … .”

    Colleen: “Hi, everybody! Tonight’s special is a pork chop smothered in salsa verde, and our soup is chilled pineapple mango.”

    Customer #1 to Customer #2: “I’ve had that soup before. It’s weird. It tastes like flavored lube.”

    Completely crudité—but consider that Customer Two ignored this explicit warning and still ordered the soup.

    Overheard while filling glasses with ice water:

    Woman: “Why did you order me the Caesar salad?”

    Man: “You always get the Caesar salad.”

    Woman: “Typical.”

    Man: “What do you mean? Is it typical for you to order what you always order? Or is it typical for me to assume that you want to order what you always order?”

    Woman: “I’m getting really sick of your thinly veiled hostility towards me.”

    Man: “What are you talking about?”

    Woman: “Oh, sure. Now I’m the one who is crazy.”

    Maybe they both are. Only Edward Albee knows for sure. But I still like to guess while replenishing ketchup containers at the end of the night.

    Sometimes I wonder if people say things to me only because I’m on the clock, and my time isn’t my own, and I don’t charge psychotherapy rates.

    Colleen: “So, you wanted a starter of the spicy green beans?”

    Customer: “As long as the beans aren’t too spicy. I like things ‘Minnesota spicy,’ you know? It’s bad if I have things that are too spicy.”

    Colleen: “Well, maybe it’s better to be on the safe side. You also expressed an interest in the cream cheese wontons … ”

    Customer: “No, I want the green beans, as long as they aren’t too spicy. Uh, well, maybe I better get the wontons, I don’t know. They sound good, but fatty. I’d rather have too spicy than fatty. But then the last time I had too spicy it went right through me. I practically crapped out a Chinese dragon.”

    Colleen (wishing desperately for a mental defragmenter that would erase the image from her mind): “Sooooo, you’d like the wontons?”

    Customer: “What the hell, give me the beans.”

    I’ve been in the business long enough to realize that I can’t save people from themselves. The best I can do is distract them. So much of what I do during the day is about keeping your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut. And yet the writing part is all about gathering information and experience and letting it roll around upstairs and repeating it to amuse you, the reader. Forthwith, here are my top ten favorite overheard items in the last three months.

    “I can’t eat meringue. It makes my gums itch.”

    “Oh my God. I can’t believe this place doesn’t have Diet 7UP. Every place has Diet 7UP. They are probably losing business.”

    “Ick. Look at that girl over there. She’s dressed like a hooker.” Five minutes later: “Quit looking at that girl over there.”

    “If you’re out of the sauvignon blanc, I’ll have a Godiva chocolatini.”

    “That guy was too gay for me. C’mon. He irons his T-shirts.”

    “Here’s my card. I would like to start a tab at this table. But just for me, nobody else.”

    “Can you throw this diaper away for me?”

    “Do you have any low-carb bread?”

    “We have a birthday at this table. When the cake is brought out, she’ll try to run. Don’t let her.”

    “Are mussels supposed to look like that?”

  • Go Time for Gangsters

    St. Paul Human Rights Director Tyrone Terrill, usually nattily attired, does not look like a flame-throwing, flak jacket-wearing radical. But some think he sounded like one in his recent open letter chastising the local African-American community for failing to distance itself from gang members and their “terrorist” acts. The letter, published in the Minneapolis Spokesman May 12, has generated such an uproar that Terrill might want to pick up a kevlar flak jacket just in case. As with Bill Cosby on a national level, Terrill has found himself at the center of a growing cultural firestorm. Should the African-American community excommunicate gangbangers and those who, by either their silence or tacit support, “enable” their criminal mayhem?

    In 1996, Minneapolis had so many gang-related murders that the city gained the unflattering moniker “Murderapolis.” Within two or three years, however, increased police surveillance, targeted prosecutions, and longer sentences removed many gang members from local streets. Unfortunately, many are back and ready to regain lost turf. By August last summer, the number of North Minneapolis killings was double that from 2003.

    This increasingly violent tableau inspired Terrill to write his letter. “I just felt moved to do something,” he told me recently. “Many in our community know exactly who the gangbangers are, and yet we often fail to call them out.” Terrill believes that those who turn a blind eye to gangsterism are no different than Southern whites who tolerated lynching and cross burnings. “NOW is the time for us to stop saying that our kids do not have summer jobs and recreational activities, so turning to gang activity is the alternative,” Terrill wrote in his letter. He also called for local gang members “to completely remove themselves from any affiliation with gangs or known gang organizations” by June 1, “or suffer the consequences of their actions.”

    Within days, St. Paul NAACP Branch President Nathaniel Khaliq publicly assailed Terrill for misusing his position as St. Paul’s Human Rights chief (the letter was written on city letterhead) to target gang members and their families. Khaliq bitterly noted that Terrill’s statement coincided with stepped-up police enforcement efforts that also targeted African-American males. Minneapolis NAACP Branch President Duane Reed, while acknowledging the need for personal safety and law enforcement, took issue with Terrill’s statement equating gang members with terrorists. “[That] takes our community to a place that is not constructive,” Reed said. “We need to focus on the reasons why some of our young people are involved in criminal activities.”

    One African-American leader, who asked to not be identified, theorized that Terrill’s comments might be part of a larger scheme to scare foundations into supporting nonprofit organizations that provide a livelihood for community activists. “Whites get scared when there is a rash of crime,” he said, making it easier for certain people to raise money. He suggested that Terrill, a Republican, might be trying to ingratiate himself with the likes of St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly, who endorsed George W. Bush, and U.S. Senator Norm Coleman.

    Terrill believes this is an unsubstantiated personal attack. “I have fought for the civil and human rights of gang members in St. Paul and Minneapolis.” He adds, however, that his sympathy for those who remain in the gang world has grown thin.
    I was more empathetic to people like Khaliq and Reed when I lived in a relatively posh neighborhood in south Minneapolis. I signed petitions condemning police misconduct against people of color and wrote emphatically about the link between poverty and criminal behavior.

    However, I have since moved to north Minneapolis. Most of my neighbors are solid, hard-working people. Yet I know that some of them have children in gangs. Some of their children have gangbanger friends. If getting rid of gangs means that some families must practice “tough love,” so be it. If it means that some families unwilling to enforce difficult rules get ostracized from the community, so be it. Our community must stop committing character assassinations on those with the guts to speak the brutal truth. Some claim that Terrill’s letter lets “the Man,” in all his various permutations, off the hook. Man or no Man, we have got to do our part. African-Americans must be willing to face the truth that we cannot save those who are unwilling to save themselves.