I took a day-long seminar called Diversity in the Workplace:
Living Our Values. We did several exercises, designed to
sensitize us to discrimination, and suggest ways to countermand it.
Well, I held that the only way to correct for discrimination was to practice
reverse discrimination. To rigorously enforce a reverse discrimination policy.
To let the discriminators know that their behavior would no longer be tolerated,
change was in the air, a new day was here, the last shall be first, false prophets cast low.
The scenario cast me as the bad guy. A straight white male. I had been exploiting
blacks, females, and gays all these years. I must pay. I must be punished.
I must eat crow. I must admit I was a bigot. An oppressor. I was
Captain Charlie. I demurred. I said, “Wait a minute.”
I said that while it was true that white men had
exploited minorities and women, and gay people,
they exploited white men, too. In fact, if you were
a white man who didn’t play that shit you were
beneath the jazz musician. That was me.
I didn’t play that shit. I despised the bastards
and they could tell it. They knew I was the 10%
that didn’t get the word, or got the word and wouldn’t
heed it. I must be made an example of.
I said that for the entire time I had been in the workforce
I had been the official enemy of my co-workers, the scapegoat,
if you will, for what the Dead White Men had done,
to me, as well as to them. Just because I was white
didn’t mean I was one of them, dem, the MFWICs.
Motherfuckers-what’s-in-charge.
No, but we can get you.
You are passive like a beatnik.
You’re easy-going like a bohemian.
You are too contrary for salt on the persimmon.
You…are…the bête-noire.
I was the maniac responsible.
The designated enemy.
I was the enemy.
As Nelson Algren said, “I, Mr. Baldwin?
I brought you over here in chains?”
You’re up there
and I’m down here.
They didn’t want to hear that.
They were the beneficiaries of my disgrace.