May 17th……

It’s the African American Heritage Festival. A time when the white kids flee back to cookie-cutter suburbia, afraid of diversity. If there was an Italian American Heritage Festival do you think all the white kids would flee? What about the black kids? At The Ohio State University diversity is a hollow word. It’s become a corporate buzzword used to attract more money. When a real opportunity to experience diversity presents itself, the piss-ant white kids hide under their mommy’s skirt. I have a dream that someday you jackass white kids will realize that the black man is not your enemy. Until then I live in a nightmare of buzzwords and contradictions.

I was walking by the freshmen dorms that bright Friday afternoon on my way to the nearest bar. The colors had been shifting slowly on campus since Monday, but that afternoon marked the great white exodus. Bethy, a little white girl, was waiting on the curb with her bags all packed. I could see she was anxious to leave as her eyes darted back and forth at every black person that walked by. I was going to talk to her, but her parents’ car pulled up before I could. Her mother ran out of the car saying, “Do you know what weekend this is?” Her father stood by the car as if to protect it. The mother was almost hysterical when she said, “we have to leave now!” I wanted to smack the shit out of them then steal their Lexus. Sadly, they fled before I could bring my backhand to bear.

So I went to the bar to drink away my rage. Alcohol has medicinal purposes. What is it that the white kids have to fear from diversity? I still don’t know the answer, only half-baked theories. The other patrons of the bar weren’t helping either. A middle-aged drunkard took it upon himself to warn the rest of us that “the darkies were invading.” I thought the civil rights movement had been more successful.

The bar tender, a good friend of mine, was listening to the ol’ racist while keeping an eye on me. So I jumped the gun and went for the baseball bat stashed behind the bar. I wanted to take the ol’ fuck outside and give him some Louisville love. He would have been more afraid of me then some ‘darkies’ after that. The bar tender, a good friend of mine, caught my hand. “You don’t want to go to jail on account of him, do ya Joe?” he said while I was still reaching for the bat.

So I gave into reason and sat back down to continue my drinking. The bar tender wasn’t a racist, but he wanted the money. So he let the old guy keep talking, the economics of ethics. You can’t argue with an ol’ racist like that, all you can do is listen. Arguing is pointless. The best-constructed analytical knife wouldn’t have pierced the fog of ignorance. I might have been able to filibuster him out of the bar, but I couldn’t have changed his opinions. All the patience in the world wouldn’t have affected him. So what option did I have left? Violence, of course.

An important structural feature of that particular bar is the back door. The bathroom is down a small hallway and right next to a door that leads into an alley. I waited for that bastard to fill his bladder with beer and get up to use the facilities. I gave him a minute head start and then very quietly followed him. The bar tender was oblivious. Kicking in the bathroom door, I found him at a urinal. I grabbed his shirt and pushed him into the hall, then threw him out the back door. “What’s this about?” he mumbled as he was sprawled out on the dirty pavement. I said, “you’re voice doesn’t mean a goddamn thing.” Then I kicked him. He shouted, so I kicked him in the face. I said, “you racists bastard” a few times while I was assaulting him. I got some blood on my shoe, which pissed me off more.

The next day the papers reported the attack on the front page. They said it was an armed robbery, but I didn’t take his money. The rest of the facts were accurate. The bastard was beaten bloody and the assailant was still at large. The reports omitted my race though. It was race related, but it was a white on white crime. On the third page of the paper some dumb fuck columnist wrote something to the effect of “can’t we all just get along.” I wanted to puke.