A Crowded Sunday (Part One)
Sunday morning started at a high emotional pitch and continued that way all the way through until a lone hamburger and onion rings dinner at the Applebee's bar brought the curtain down. It actually began Saturday morning with a mysterious e-mail from Bing. He wanted to meet for lunch after church. I think I must have spent the night wondering what the occasion for a one-on-one could possibly be. It could only be one of two polar opposite possibilities, I thought: 1) his health or, 2) Crosby.
It turned out to be neither. He needed a session on some stuff going on at his workplace. It involved race and gender and probably some generation-gap miscuing as well. It's kind of a sad situation because Bing is not a bad person and it is difficult to imagine how anyone could take anything he said as an insult.
But, people have evolved a weird sense of rights and wrongs over the time we have spent bent over keyboards, absorbing our news and information from increasingly narrower sources. We no longer talk to each other over lunch or at the water cooler, but instead, quote back articles we've read that make for good "talking points". My cousin Kelvin has all but stopped having lunch with his fellow engineers because he will almost be obligated to listen to the latest Breitbart-inspired sound bites as his colleagues try them out on his shop's only African-American.
Liberals have a similar kind of transactional relationship with their black friends. I find myself constantly trading what I know about being black in return for acceptance for who I am. Operating from within an odd sort of ironist's cage, the very thing I bring to the table is the very thing I am probably trying my best not to emphasize about myself. Bing's big mistake was in assuming this young, black, female co-worker understood that this was how highly educated, well-connected, white people maintain their relationships. Irrespective of race, it's almost invariably about doing favors for one another.
In any event, this co-worker viewed their "friendship" differently, as something apocryphal, highly conditional at best, and probably entirely in Bing's head (as opposed to tribal which is the form most of us are born with and struggle against as we grow older and more sophisticated.)
The sad thing is that 90% of my friendships are probably in my head, too.
It turned out to be neither. He needed a session on some stuff going on at his workplace. It involved race and gender and probably some generation-gap miscuing as well. It's kind of a sad situation because Bing is not a bad person and it is difficult to imagine how anyone could take anything he said as an insult.
But, people have evolved a weird sense of rights and wrongs over the time we have spent bent over keyboards, absorbing our news and information from increasingly narrower sources. We no longer talk to each other over lunch or at the water cooler, but instead, quote back articles we've read that make for good "talking points". My cousin Kelvin has all but stopped having lunch with his fellow engineers because he will almost be obligated to listen to the latest Breitbart-inspired sound bites as his colleagues try them out on his shop's only African-American.
Liberals have a similar kind of transactional relationship with their black friends. I find myself constantly trading what I know about being black in return for acceptance for who I am. Operating from within an odd sort of ironist's cage, the very thing I bring to the table is the very thing I am probably trying my best not to emphasize about myself. Bing's big mistake was in assuming this young, black, female co-worker understood that this was how highly educated, well-connected, white people maintain their relationships. Irrespective of race, it's almost invariably about doing favors for one another.
In any event, this co-worker viewed their "friendship" differently, as something apocryphal, highly conditional at best, and probably entirely in Bing's head (as opposed to tribal which is the form most of us are born with and struggle against as we grow older and more sophisticated.)
The sad thing is that 90% of my friendships are probably in my head, too.