WHAT IS YOUR COLOR ? ?

As a child of the segregated south I have lived through all the names used to describe persons of dusky skin color. Some were degrading and insulting slurs, however as I recall the progression of acceptable terms during my lifetime they were Negro, colored, black, and African American. I have trouble with several of these terms and offer a change suggestion.

Black is an adjective defining no color from the absorption of nearly all light. My Oxford dictionary also lists completely dark, angry, sinister, deadly, gloomy, sullen, and comic as adjectives synonyms with black. Most people of color I encounter or have known are neither completely dark, angry, sinister, gloomy or sullen. I think all the negative aspects associated with black disqualify it as a collective to describe any people of color. Young children forced to call themselves black must someday make negative associations with the word. As examples; the bad cowboy always had a black hat or black horse. The place where monsters await is always a black hole or completely dark closet. How many innocent children have been haunted and psychologically injured because they had to identify themselves as black ?

I believe Americans share a range of skin colors from nearly white (albino) to very dark. This range includes a rainbow of olive, pink, yellow, red, alabaster, tan, and brown pigmentation shades. Nobody is simply all white, black, red or yellow or should be defined as such. All people are beautiful and unique in the skin God gave them. We need to proceed and define this issue more carefully.

African American is a misleading term in my opinion because few Negroes in America recently immigrated directly from Africa. Also, people in America's "melting pot" should never carry around names with hyphenated nationalities. For decades every race, religion, creed, and skin color have co mingled and procreated to produce an unbelievable variety of skin colors and mixed race combinations, and they're all Americans. One may have an ancestry stretching back to China, Mexico, England, Ethiopia, India, Ireland, Egypt, and a thousand other places in the world, but people blessed with living in the greatest nation on the globe should celebrate America and not mix their identities with other countries or continents. Know your ancestry and celebrate your origins, but don't diminish being an American by attaching a disclaimer to your Americanism. We are a world no longer comprised of roaming tribes identifying themselves by geography, occupation, weaponry, or legends.

While Negro and Negroid scientifically describe dark-skinned people, there are millions of Americans with deep ancestral roots in Africa who are neither black (see earlier paragraph) or dark-skinned. Africans like South Americans, Europeans, Australians, and Asians sport skin colors which cover a wide spectrum of hues. Like the classification Caucasian, the term Negro is too narrow in my view. White is not always good, example, the guy in the white hat is not always the hero, and the white knight is sometimes a thug. Also, Negro contains key letters found in epithets and slang terms used against many people of dark color. The letters mispronounced can easily form a degrading pejorative term.

My choice for defining all of us  is "people of color" because everybody has a unique and beautiful skin color. Rather than saying the black or white guy lets try better choices such as citizen of color, robber of color, soldier of color, or policeman of color. Best to describe someone by their name, but defining someone by a broad term such as a specific color is inadequate, in my opinion. Someone may have smooth ebony skin or a milky white complexion but to infer one is black, African-American or negro, and the other is white or has origins in the Caucasus region is limiting.

I believe our world will be a better, more peaceful place when we stop dividing and defining ourselves by skin color or other tribal identifications. I sincerely think that if a mass blood and DNA analysis were conducted on all Americans, it would show that the 350 plus million people of America are all relatives !

I will refrain from using color to ID people in the future. I hope we can all become Americans of color instead of insisting on the limiting terms we've used in the past. If the winner didn't just fly in from Algeria, he is an American man of color who just won the lottery. If the bad Canadian guy who blew up the hot dog stand just got off a bus from Canada he is properly a Canadian terrorist.

I expect a few may venture the opinion that I'm a stupid old "white" guy, but I'd prefer being labeled a stupid old American guy of color, thank you

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BOBBY'S MINDFUL WAR

He wasn't much to look at anymore.

Just a rag of a man wearing thrift store stuff and a face of permanent stubble. His once brilliant blue eyes were now cloudy and one was milky white blind. His mouth was contorted in a permanent frown and his voice was low and gravely. He didn't say much and mostly nodded. He didn't live anywhere, yet he lived everywhere. Under bridges, in falling down abandoned sheds, and sometimes at a homeless shelter if a bed was available and he could manage to co exist without fighting for a few hours. While he existed in the shadow world of the big city, most of the toughs left him alone. It was known he had nothing, was a harmless sot, but would kill or maim anyone insulting his space. Nobody knew his age, but most guessed he was in his sixties close to seventy. 

Sometimes he begged for change at street corners with a sign roughly lettered, "homeless vet". When he got enough change he would buy a burger or a beer. It didn't matter to Bobby. A beer or burger would give him enough energy to move on, find another handout, a place to sleep, and a quiet spot to relieve himself. When handouts were lean, he would dig into dumpsters or hang out at  take away joints. Once in a while he'd score a half eaten handout or bag of somebodies leftovers.

Most people ignored Bobby and for the most part, he probably ignored them. To most observers, he appeared to be just another waif aimlessly wandering the streets. He lived and sought to survive in the moment. Few probably gave a damn that he had a past or future. Bobby simply didn't give a good tinkers damn about anything. But he was part of my history.

Lost in the endless maze of inner city streets I saw Bobby slumped over with his back to a wall. I had seen him several times earlier, but for some reason this day he immediately looked at me as I passed in my car. Briefly our eyes met and I recognized him despite his awful shabbiness. When our eyes joined a reunion occurred and fifty years vanished. He knew me and I knew him. I felt guilty that I had not stopped when I first recognized him. What should I do ?

I remembered we had been kids together. Played and schooled as best pals, fought over girlfriends, and backed each other up in fights over turf, girls, and other inconsequential matters. We knew each other from the past and in a single glance of recognition it all came back. But, what had happened to Bobby ? I knew he had flunked college and got his ass drafted to Vietnam. I recall the local headlines when he got his Silver Star and a bunch of other medals. Then our lives evidently went in different directions, our paths and careers didn't cross and contact was lost for precious decades. Sometimes I would spy an old photograph in a family album or imagine his face staring back at me in a mirror. But, seeing this bum who had been my best bud and a genuine war champion reduced to the rubble and stubble of a tramp was shocking. I don't know why, but I didn't stop when our glances reflected mutual recognition. I drove on while memorizing the street name where Bobby now lived out in the open. I convinced myself to return and re friend my old buddy. Rescue him if I could, but at least offer him something he didn't have. Perhaps a little cash, some clean clothes, a safe place to live with a soft bed and a roof from the weather. I toyed with many noble plans to help. I had the money, but days and weeks passed before I returned to rescue Bobby. I gave myself plenty of excuses telling   myself that while I truly wanted to help, I was strangely repulsed and afraid. 

I really didn't want to leave Bobby to live and die miserably on the streets and finally gathered enough courage to plan a rescue operation.

On a fine sunny day I motored to the corner where I had seen him a few weeks earlier. No Bobby. I circled six or eight blocks of the neighborhood, but no Bobby. At one corner a guy was slumped in a corner outside an abandoned warehouse. I thought, perhaps hoped, it might be Bobby. I parked, carefully locked my car, and fingered the 38 in my coat pocket for security. Before getting too close I could smell the urine and feces stink radiating from the heap. With a "hey buddy" and shoulder tap I roused the guy. I unconsciously wanted to remember the fingers that had touched this creature to insure a through sanitizing later. The curled body twitched and slowly uncurled. A red scarred face emerged. In a snarl I heard, "whatta ya want, I ain't done nothing - I ain't got nothing". The pathetic beast before me was not Bobby, and I suddenly felt threatened. I sputtered "sorry" and dug in my pocket and threw a fiver his way. As I escaped to my car he mumbled "thanks pal".

I circled the area a few more times before deciding to visit a few homeless shelters in the neighborhood. At each place I found the duty manager and asked about a guy named Bobby Benton. I described him as a local fellow about seventy years old who was a highly decorated Vietnam veteran.  "Yeah, everyone knew about Bobby B., he had lots of crazy stories and had terrific nightmares", but nobody claimed to have seen him lately. I checked two local police precincts and asked about missing persons, unidentified John Does at the morgue, or unknowns in lockup. No luck.

Frustrated, I hopped into my car adjusted the air conditioning to super cool and felt content that Bobby Benton had disappeared. I felt lousy that I had not stopped and rescued him the first time I saw him. But, I was smugly satisfied that at least I had tried to retrieve my old pal from his life of misery. I even massaged my aching conscience with the idea that it might be a sin to alter a persons path to personal destruction or fulfillment. As I neared the original spot where I first spied and stared into the eyes of Bobby I imagined seeing him again. I rubbed my eyes as I pulled over to the curb and incredulously approached Bobby. " Hey Bobby Benton, it's your old chum and I'm here to help you". I reached out to lift him to his feet, but he refused to rise. Rather he looked at me real hard.

Finally he said,
"you are the real Bobby Benton, and I am but your shadow from a long ago war in your mind."