My First Black Friend’s Name Was Mudd
And that was sad because he was surrounded by primitive white supremacists who liked rap and pro sports but still called all non-whites mud people when they thought no one but magic Aryan Jesus might hear. 10 years ago no one listened when I told these tales and even black dudes like him said I sounded crazy. Then now hit, but I’m not among the surprised because I always knew Hitler’s SS was the most exclusive initiated cool club ever.
Unlike civil society, the SS and all other uncivil, pale reflections of white supremacy will never take down the whites only sign. For good reason you automatically think of the Ku Klux Klan, but every conservative Christian racist worth their money can tell you that the problem with hillbillies is they’re all uncivilized savages covered in moles, or the devil’s spots as some of the meanest church-goers used to say. Whereas the SS was a pseudo-scientific attempt to find the hottest and smartest that obviously has great connectivity and commonality with today’s social media and reality tv narcissists who grew up on Hot or Not.
There’s no pleasure in being right like that. The three countries that first gave the world elected fascism — Austria, Germany and Italy — have now voted for it again. While Russian intelligence uses racists of their own to provide direct political and economic support and feed this manic, eager rekindling of that old Nazi flame. Turns out there’s a whole lot of white nationalists over there on the other side of the Atlantic, where we were told it was all liberals. And unfortunately as everyone knows, once it’s cool among Eurotrash it soon will be among America’s very own white trash too.
Ethnic White Nationalists
Generational racists from leading local families saturated the small, rural town where my family moved when I was very young. There I found myself surrounded by white nationalists who called non-whites mud people but didn’t trust me enough to share that key detail until the very days before I finally left. Either I missed it in the fog of church and family values hypocrisy, or I was just so desensitized by Holocaust pictures and Jewish jokes that it didn’t register until I finally re-encountered it with a new lens around age 18.
My 1990s country boy white crew had been raised among families, friends, churches, clubs and schools where parents and other role models snickeringly made jokes about slaves and the Holocaust. Indiana then was basically still an ill-concealed, contemporary appendage of the Confederate States of America. In fact, we provided a number of rebel volunteers. When my family relocated from a nearby urban center to that small town I was at first an outsider, but by the time I walked back out of that hellhole for good, my childhood friends had finally built up enough confidence to initiate me into their dark, local rites.
Backwoods baptist gunowners like them used to know better than to take off their hoods in public or show strangers the swastikas, reich eagles, black suns and other runes decorating their basements. But that changed in 2016 when they were all suddenly reenergized and emboldened to abruptly make the world’s thitherto best country inexplicably great again. Nevermind obscure Nazi websites that reach a few million troubled parents’ basement-dwellers, count how many people turn on Fox News after church to get a more accurate idea of how many racists and fascists there are among us.
Black and White Power
But like me, black friends beyond my school district and athletic conference — whom I only met because of all-star and intramural sports teams — knew what was lurking out there in the back 50 among them thar woods. They always knew that any party could abruptly turn into some entitled local asshole-king making firewood into a burning cross, or just straight up calling them a nigger there to steal the white women in front of hostile ethnic nationalist crowds who have long resented having to suppress their worst racist instincts.
This will actually be the outcome of Omarosa’s n-word tape — she’ll release it just before the elections, but it will result in landslide Republican turnout that dashes all naive liberal hopes of a blue wave as conservative Christian racists flock to the kakistocrats who have finally taken the courageous step to reveal they also agree that hate speech is free speech and the free market should not balk at incentivizing the meanest and dumbest among us. A close childhood friend dismayed by my tolerance even took the chance to tell me recently that thank gawd they finally got some good white rappers like Post Malone because he don’t wanna listen to that black shit no more.
But that’s absurd, because it’s the second decade of the year 2000 and we’ll all soon have flying hovercars; far more should unite than divide us. I remember college despite all the weed and acid: it was only a decade ago. Fratboys and homeboys have been sharing universities without race riots for a half-century; forget those short troubles in 1950s Arkansas when the governor stood in the elementary school doorway to physically prevent a little girl from entering.
The digital generation was not part of segregation — we went to the same colleges together; grinded on the same confused, vulnerable young women just like us to the same abusive Eazy-E, Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Eminem rap-rape songs together; bigotedly accused each other of being fags together; bragged about how much pussy we got or who has the biggest dick together; and just disrespected everyone outside our crude shiteater bully clique together.
In high school, we played sports together; proudly told tales back country home of our token black friends or one black girlfriend to impress bumpkin kith and kin; got high together and laughed at Dave Chapelle, Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor together. ABC’s TGIF lineup was half-white with Full House and Step by Step, and half-black with Family Matters and Hanging with Mr. Cooper. Within the same generation we should not be hitting each other with Home Depot products over the right to wave swastikas and Confederate flags.
This can only mean one thing: complete and utter opposition to what post-Civil War America stands for and a total repudiation of both two centuries of women’s, workers’ and civil rights as well as black musicians white volks like such as Michael Jackson, whom I distinctly recall rhapsodizing us all to great acclaim and popularity throughout my rural childhood and adolescence that it don’t matter if you’re black or white. Then he died after taking drugs to dull his senses while trying to literally turn himself white.
America’s failure to honestly address proud racialized disunity for centuries humiliates me and is always my first fast answer when self-righteous, so-called patriots bewilderedly wonder aloud why do I hate America. Well assholes, that’s not the question — it’s actually why the rest of you don’t to some certain extent, because much of it is indefensible and frankly un-American. I learned my lesson and am eager to teach it so — like Michelle Obama bravely admitted — I can also finally be proud of this place for once.
So Quinton from Southside, if you’re out there let me know man. Looked you up and saw we’re neighbors again — both escaped to the coast. Glad you made it too dude! Them hills, hollers and swamps was no place for people like us…
