So, A Paranoid Hoplophobe Who Happens To Be a Black Woman Walks Into a Gun Show
Responding to Kashana Cauley, "A Black Woman Walks Into a Gun Show."
As a Wisconsin native, I’m used to squinty-eyed white Midwestern suspicion. But since we stood several hundred feet from a lot of guns and I figured the guys were probably armed, my feet froze.
You actually think that guys are randomly and in public going to shoot you? What, you don't think that the attendees at a gun show have any scruples against committing murder? (Or, at least, enough common sense to know that if they did so in public and absent any provocation, they would be pretty much spending the rest of their lives in prison?)
Projecting a bit, methinks?
But background checks are required in Illinois, where my teenage cousin joined a gang and shot someone in 2010. He took his lawyer’s advice not to talk about his case, so I channeled my sadness into learning how Chicago gangs like his get their guns. More of the guns used in Chicago gang shootings come from Indiana than anywhere else.
So your cousin, apparently, was a murderous scumbag, and hopefully will be spending a good long time in prison where he can't hurt decent folk. And this is the fault of gun shows, because ...?
If someone stabbed you with a knife, would that be the fault of knives? If someone hit you with a baseball bat (as happened to me, once) would that be the fault of baseball bats?
You're blaming the tool rather than the wielder.
But I didn’t think I, a black woman, would be welcome at a gun show.
Four people sat at the registration table: one white guy in his fifties and three women in their twenties, one of whom was black. Her blackness threw me off nearly as much as the mood outside. We made the sort of eye contact that meant we’d acknowledged each other’s blackness but we weren’t going to bond over it.
You keep assuming that being pro-gun implies being anti-black. Why? Black people probably benefit more from legal gun ownership than do white people. Do you want me to tell you why, or is it obvious?
Women probably benefit more from legal gun ownership than to men, for a different reason. Do you want me to tell you why, or is this obvious as well?
I turned away from him toward tables filled with more guns than I’d ever seen, forgot how to breathe, and retreated to the bathroom to calm myself behind a locked stall.
This is perhaps the most hilarious or sad, depending on how I look at it, descriptions of paranoid hoplophobia I've ever seen.
Why do tables full of unloaded weapons, in a room where no one has shown you any particular ill-will, terrify you? Seriously, do you imagine that the guns will get up, load themselves and shoot you, all on their little ownsomes?
Black people aren’t part of the big tent of gun ownership. We’re never assumed to be law abiding, reasonable gun owners. That kind of gun ownership is seen as an upstanding white person act; a picket fence closed to outsiders like blacks.
By your assertion. And it is gun licensing laws, particularly "may issue" as opposed to "shall issue," which create this problem to the extent that it is real. In fact, the original gun control laws were passed in the post Civil War South, to make sure that blacks couldn't use guns to resist whites attempting to "discipline them." Too many Klansmen coughing out their lives all over their nice white sheets otherwise, dontcha know?
This was a lot more diversity than I expected, but not enough to stop people from staring at me.
You don't think that at least a little of the looks you were getting may have come from your deer-in-the-headlights expression of irrational terror? Seriously, I once went through an episode of paranoia, decades ago, and I know from personal experience that if you display fearful or hostile affect toward others, it causes them to become nervous in return, because they don't know why you're reacting like this!
I saw one guy wearing a T-shirt that said It’s Not Racist If It’s True, and looked back at G from halfway across the room. She seemed perfectly comfortable sitting behind her table, and I ached for her anyway, having to see T-shirts like that at shows like this.
So, um, true things shouldn't be mentioned if they have implications which might be seen as racist? Or no black person would possibly agree with the sentiment? Has it occurred to you that perhaps the woman you met agreed with the T-shirt? Or do you believe that you, being black, get to think thoughts for all other black people, and if they think differently they're being out of line?
I’m equally familiar with the uniquely white Midwestern combination of down-home friendliness and suspicion that I encountered at the gun show, in alternating rounds. It’s subtle, but it’s constant, and I felt it for the 23 years I lived there. Sometimes it bubbled into something more, like the fourth grader who called me a nigger at school. But mostly it was the high school and college friends who told me I “wasn’t that black,” and confided in me about their love lives and career dreams. It’s the dizzying swing from Scott and his lunch recommendations to the men who stare at me as if blinking might physically wound them.
Apparently, white folk are being racist to you if they're hostile, and if they're friendly. There's no way to win.
Have you ever stopped to think that, if there's no way to win, there's also no rereason to TRY? With you, anyway. I have no problem getting along with people of all races, personally.
Oh, and FYI: when they said you weren't "that black" what they meant was the popular image of black street culture. Being a thug or a whore. They were actually complimenting you. What should be bothering you is just how being a thug or a whore has become synonymous with being black. Hint: it's mostly black people who have promoted this image.
So, you were terrified of guys who sold Confederate flags, but otherwise did nothing to harm you. I'd sympathize more, but I bet you don't have a qualm about attending pro-Palestinian, anti-Semitic demonstrations -- I'm Jewish.
To summarize: you went to a convention, glared in fear and suspicion at everyone around you, and found that some of the people were still nice to you anyway. And no one did anything to hurt or insult you in the least bit.
And you still don't realize that you were being paranoid.
Hopefully, some day you will grow up.