Q: What happened to you at the Bahnson Company?
A: In Visceral Bukowski: Inside The Sniper Landscape of L.A. Writers,
by Ben Pleasants, Bukowski tells Pleasants that one of the things he left out of
Post Office was the racism.
Not his racism. I don't think he was
a racist. I think he was a misanthrope.
But the racism of his black co-workers
towards him.
He was white. Most of the other letter-carriers were black.
They busted his chops the whole 12 years he worked there.
Once he was out,
if they'd see him, outside, they were friendly.
But on the job is was strictly
us versus them, and he was them.
Q: Horace Tapscott was outspoken. He got a racist jacket hung on him.
For speaking his mind about white people.
He said he didn't hate white people.
He just liked black people better.
A: I think that's true. And what if he did hate white people? He had good reason to.
Q: Do you hate black people?
A: No. But I like white people better.
Q: You're not going to say, "I judge each person as an individual. If they're interesting, polite, and treat me with respect, I like them. If they're rude, hostile, or disrespectful, I don't."
A: No. How I feel about black people is my business.
How I treat
black people is a public matter.
If I treat them courteously they shouldn't
care what I think of them. If I treat them fairly. If I demand that they treat
me fairly, treat my children fairly, that's a legitimate thing for me to ask.
At the Bahnson Company I was the only white guy on an all-black crew.
They
busted my chops. Every night.
The whole time I worked there.
I left.
I don't work there anymore.
Q: Do you know anyone else who had this experience?
A: Brenda. She worked on an IT Help Desk in Atlanta with mostly black
co-workers.
She had the same experience I did.
She was treated unfairly.
Discriminated against. Because she was white.
Q: What did she do?
A: Stuck it out until she was laid off, so she could draw unemployment.
It didn't hurt her. It was just aggravating.
And you got tired of their
lip, their sulled-up poutiness, when you saw what they did when they had the upper
hand.
They don't want to be treated equally, they want to mistreat white
people.
Q: Not all of them.
A: One who doesn't keeps his own counsel.
If a black person you
thought was your friend has to choose between being your friend and acting as other
black people expect him to act, he will betray you.
He has to live among
black people. Not with you.
You were a private luxury he can no longer afford.
A private vice.
Q: Man, that's harsh.
That's cold.
A: It may be a logical fallacy, too. I am generalizing from my own experience. Extrapolating from what has happened to me, over the years.
Q: Maybe they think you act that way.
A: Maybe they do. I don't.
I try to do what's right.
I
hate the white male hegemony that makes the rules as much as anyone. I have fought
it since I was a boy. To be accused of being a part of it, benefiting from it, buying
into it, if it helps me, is especially galling.
Q: You don't play the race card?
A: No, and white privilege is a fiction, as far as a poor white
person is concerned.
Captain Charley's children may have had it, but I don't,
and my children didn't.
Indeed, the way affirmative action works my children
are at a disadvantage, because they are white. The nod goes to minorities, women,
gay people, and the handicapped.
Q: That's paranoia.
A: No, that's deductive reasoning.
They give first prize to a poster
that says, "Who the best?"
The teachers speak ebonics. Why wouldn't
they teach it? They say aks and wif. English teachers.
Q: When you say your black co-workers busted your chops, what did they
do?
And why were you on an all-black crew?
A: My size.
It was rough-ass work, putting 21' 5" I-beam through
a sandblaster, shearing the ends off at an angle in a press break, grinding the burrs
off with a pneumatic grinder, then spot-welding cable-harness brackets on them.
Each operation called for two men.
You had to work together, or one of you
could get hurt.
I mean wrench a back, lose a finger. Get thrown off a platform.
You had to have a rhythm.
They could all work with each other, but none of
them could work with me.
That is, they could work with me fine, most of the
night--we worked ten-hour shifts--but then before the shift was over they would let
go of their end of the beam a little late, or a little soon.
That kind of
shit will beat you to death, when you're tired.
Q: What did you do?
A: Grinned at them.
Tried to make them feel ashamed of themselves.
Q: Did it work?
A: It didn't stop them.
Q: Do you think they believed that white crews did that to black people?
A: I don't know. No white crew I ever worked on did that to black people,
although a white guy here and there might have. The crew didn't, as a group. And
most of the time, if a person did, the boss would tell him to stop.
A black
crew doing that to a white co-worker, the black boss acted like he didn't notice.
It was a "Huh?" situation.