This news item is a few weeks old, so I apologize to those who have read it already, rolled their eyes, and punched a wall. It aptly illustrates that we haven’t quite arrived at the station aboard the post partisan express, and maybe, just maybe, talking about race and gender is instructive. It is also proof one can still turn the verbal double play all in one conversation and be racist and sexist at the same time. Certainly takes a special talent. The short article appears here.

A county judge in Hagerstown was reprimanded for calling three black female lawyers “the Supremes” in court and advising the defendant to get “an experienced male attorney.”

Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone has acknowledged that his comments suggested racial and sexual bias. In his written response to a complaint, Boone said he was trying to protect the three public defenders from representing a difficult defendant.

Oh, I get it, he was trying to help them, ah the burden of the white man must be excruciating. What is a guy to do when he is surrounded by those he is certain are beneath him? There is no chance that these lawyers went to school to learn their profession and could be competent. Maybe he was gravely concerned that they went to one of those girl law schools where they teach you to dress cute and make a darn good cup of coffee for the men and might be overwhelmed by the challenge of …. being a lawyer. Was he worried they went to the singing law school, you know the one that black women all go to. After all, if an experienced male attorney was assigned to the case he might be able to fix up one of these women with an appropriate husband. Isn’t that why women of any color go to law school? To find husbands? Besides, these women were taking honest work away from experienced male attorneys and somebody has to stand up for their rights.

I think my own notions of class might be a bit too quaint. I think about my grandparents. Granddad with a grade eight education, worked at a steel mill when things like that actually existed in North America. Grandma worked part time on the weekends at a dry cleaners operating one of those giant presses. They owned a small home. They took modest vacations camping all across Canada and the United States. They believed in “saving for a rainy day”. My grandpa, like most men in his neighborhood could build and fix things. My uncle Floyd was a printing press operator who made a bit of extra money on the side fixing cars in his neighborhood. My mother went to nursing school at age seventeen because girls became teachers, nurses, or secretaries. Although she later went to university as an adult, it never occurred to my grandparents to send her even though she had straight As. There was a rather well off side of the family and the women from that part became teachers. It was considered respectable to do that.

Then I think of my own early childhood. We were probably considered middle class because my mother was in a union and while they did go on strike, she was never laid off. My grandparetns had to consider layoffs in their houshold budget. My parents separated and my mother got a job as a nursing instructor. She made exactly enough money to qualify for a mortgage and borrowed the down payment off my grandparents. Despite the fact that my mother was an is skillful at handling money, it generally ran low at the end of the month and we ate vegetarian. Most of the men on my street worked in factories, I lived in a GM town and working there was a commonly expressed aspiration. When I was eighteen one of my childhood friends got on with GM and we thought she had won the lottery. She did to.

The men on my street generally worked in factories although there was a teacher, a few firemen, and a cop. If you raised to much hell, Art, the cop might talk to your parents. His boys, one of whom was my age, were expected to be nice to the young kids and even the girls and include them in games. They might have resented it but they reluctantly included me street hockey, helped me learn how to skate at the local arena, and beat the shit out of a boy from another neighborhood when my nose got bloodied. When I took power skating, a big guy from out of the neighborhood who knew Art’s boys, took up for me when the guys in my class accidental knocked me over about a hundred times. He skated over and asked what the problem was. Naturally, I said there was none. He was sixteen, I was ten, I had no freaking clue who he was. The next week he was there at the rink, teen aged boys hung out there even when they weren’t playing hockey. He showed me how to tie my skates a different way to compensate for my weak ankles and introduced himself. Nobody knocked me on my ass at power skating although they still told me I couldn’t skate worth shit.

It wasn’t all nostalgic tribalistic bonding. Until other couples got divorced on our street, my mom and I were outsiders. The women considered her a threat, the men thought she was uppity. I routinely got into fights at school because I “did not have a dad” and spent an inordinate amount of time at the principals office. I was small, I lost most of the fights. My clothes weren’t stylish and my mother could not volunteer as a parent chaperon on school field trips. There was a limited amount of social tolerance for anybody who was perceived to be different. If you were different you were expected not to draw attention to yourself and inhale a certain amount of harassment or exclusion at recess. Teachers did not intervene unless blood was spilled. My school went from K to 8, it was big by the standards of those days:700 kids by the time I left. Older kids used drugs there on the weekends and dropped the occasional needle. A chapter of a well known motorcycle gang had a house within walking distance of my street. Everybody knew where it was. Nobody got very nosy. My mother’s best friend was from India. When she and her husband came to visit, people in my neighborhood stood in the driveway and stared.

My mother went to graduate school secretly because you got a 500 dollar bonus at the community college. She was worried she would be seen as too ambitious by her boss and get assigned extra work so she did not tell anybody. She just wanted the money.

The United States was considered rather exotic. They were hip.

One day at work a fellow supervisor wanted to show us a funny cartoon somebody emailed him. It wasn’t funny. I said it wasn’t funny. I suggested it was rather racist. They stared at me. They didn’t ask me why I thought it was racist so I proceeded to explain exactly what my perspective was. Silence.

It was a busy night at work, the day shift person left and my colleague and I did not have an opportunity to discuss it further. I was disappointed that my colleague who I rather liked did not see where I was coming from. I should know by now not to have expectations about how people will behave or react. We ate lunch together and she asked me if I was angry with her and if I thought she was racist. I responded that had no idea if she was or not. She told me I was being overly sensitive and that “black people were not going to like me more if I took their side.”

Another night I came upon the nurses station and conversation stopped quite abruptly. I suggested it was an interesting coincidence that I suddenly appeared and they all became engrossed in paper work. A nurse piped up and said,”Well, we all know what you’re like and I don’t want to get busted.” She then admitted she had made an anti-semitic remark about her dentist. I asked her if she had attended diversity class, she sighed, rolled her eyes and said she would go in order to avoid being forced to go. She went on to clarify that she “had no problem with Jews” but she did not like this dentist. I asked her the obvious question,” Why didn’t you just say you didn’t like him, and why go to a dentist you don’t like?” She told me I was “too hyper about race and that other stuff” and that I needed to relax. I decided to continue the conversation in private so that I could tell her that she was full of bullshit,and that she was trying to skirt being accountable for her own words.

You’re too sensitive. I did not mean it that way. You’re trying to stir things up. You’re trying to promote bad feelings between people. You aren’t from here. You’re taking up for “them.” You’re reading too much into it. You don’t understand. “They” use those words, why can’t I? It is the way I was raised. They. They. They. You. You. You.

One day, a friend who is also a manager went to a meeting. They discussed a leadership conference they were all going to attend and asked whether she should pay by check or cash. A white colleague at the meeting said,” Maybe we can pay in food stamps.” My friend, who is black looked at a mutual colleague who is also black and they stared at her open mouthed. The meeting was ending and nobody else seemed to notice. She met with our director who was puzzled not comprehending why my colleagues were offended. My friend called me. She was furious and wanted to take it further but was a newly hired manager and concerned about being perceived as a “trouble maker.” She asked my opinion and I thought that she should go up the chain of command and explain why she believed the comment was racist. She met with the VP of nursing and was met with defensiveness. She was told by the VP that she personally knew that individual and there was absolutely no possible way that X was a racist. My friend explained that she was not interested in making personal accusations just providing an “educational” moment about how such comments could be perceived. The VP praised my friend as young “bright and intelligent” leader who had “much to offer”. In other words: shut the fuck up and be glad we promoted you and quit insulting my friends. She received an informal apology but no hint of admission that the comment may have been racist just a “sorry I hurt your feelings” moment. I asked her if there was anything I could do to support her, she sighed and said listening was enough because I caught enough “shit on my own” when I spoke up.

Unlike many immigrants to the United States, I had no dreams to drive me. I came on a TN Visa, married an American, and ended up staying. Nothing interesting. Nothing dramatic.

But a curious metamorphosis has engaged me…. I am neither. My attachment to concepts of nationalism and national identity has dwindled. I was always highly suspicious about the darker implications of nationalism. When I go home to visit friends and family in southern Ontario, they often irk me with their knee jerk nationalism that is composed almost entirely of smug anti-Americanism. It has no substance, no real history or meaning just a sense of relief that they are not American. It isn’t even an anti-Americanism that can be salvaged and made into something more promising, no roots in international brotherhood peace and good will. Never mind that southern Ontario stretching from the Niagara region to the GTA is full of suburbs that are indistinguishable from American suburbs, never mind that the malls are full of chain stores from the United States, never mind that Canadians watch American TV and movies. Never mind that the United States is Canada’s largest trading partner and vice versa. Without Toronto, southern Ontario would be a suburb of the United States, although it now looks vastly different from the area I grew up in.