… and sometimes you really wouldn’t understand.
The phrase “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand” is a trite quip, and I’ve never cared for it. I do use it sometimes, but only with my dad, only in jest, and only when we are teasing my mom.
Today, however, I find myself thinking about the phrase, and thinking I may have underestimated its truth.
Let me explain.
I had jury duty today. I wasn’t jazzed about having to go, not because I didn’t want to do my civic duty, but because my summons required me to show up at the courthouse at 7-fucking-45 a.m.
7:45!
IN THE MORNING.
If you know me at all, you know that I don’t believe in “7:45 a.m.” In fact, I don’t believe in anything before 9:30 a.m.
But I digress.
I woke up at 6:30, grumbled about it, fired off some grumpy tweets, got dressed, and (ultimately) left the house at about 7:30. I assumed the court clerks knew about Black People Time, so I figured if I showed up a bit late, they’d understand.
I have never served on a jury before, nor have I ever had to report for jury duty before. The last time I got a summons, I called in each day, but wasn’t required to report. Huzzah!
Not so lucky this time. Boo.
Unsure of the proper attire, and wanting to make sure that I wasn’t dressed in my usual homeless chic fashion (just in case I ran into any attorneys or judges that I know), I made sure to dress real-respectable like. I even threw on the sparkly cross-like pendant that I borrowed from my neighbor the other week when I covered the South Central Tea Party Rally for TheGrio.com. (Message!)
I also threw on a super cute pair of shoes that I never get to wear anymore now that my career consists of part-time non-profit literacy advocacy, and part-time sitting around in my underwear and blogging.
I made it to court in plenty of time, and after listening to the orientation blather, a couple hours of sitting around, and an hour of more blather, it was lunchtime.
I wandered to a restaurant, grabbed a burger and a Coke, and wandered back in the direction of the courthouse. As I was making my way back, I saw a small shop touting itself as a “cigar art lounge.” It looked interesting and I had a few minutes to kill, so I popped in.
As I was browsing in the store looking at the art (including an odd but awesome unicorn made of “recycled everything”), a man walked in.
He was about 60 years old, rotund, and sporting suspenders and a bowtie. He looked familiar. I kept furtively glancing at him, trying to figure out whether I knew him, and if so, how. I couldn’t place him, and since I was in a chatty mood, I struck up a conversation.
“Do you come here a lot?”
Yeah, I know. What kind of question is that? Who asks that of someone they are clearly not hitting on?
He responded: “I do. I’m known for leaving my half-smoked cigars on the couch.”
The lounge was outfitted with leather couches, and ashtrays so people could sit and smoke their cigars and fancy cigarettes in the store, away from the blazing California sun.
“Do you work around here?”
“Yeah,” he tutted in a decidedly odd manner.
I began to think that maybe I was overstepping my bounds. Maybe he was involved in the case for which a jury was being empaneled. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be talking to him. Maybe I should have followed instructions and worn my juror badge to lunch. (Even though it clashed with my outfit.)
Nonplussed, I pushed onward.
“Are you a judge?”
By this point, I thought that he had been the judge on a case I’d worked on five or so years ago. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I was so hellbent on determining that he was or was not that particular judge. I was curious, I guess.
“No. Not a judge.” he said, and continued to puff on his cigar.
“Oh,” I replied. “Never mind, then. You just looked really familiar to me, and I thought maybe I had appeared before you at some point.”
He looked at me and said, “I’m not a judge. I’m a public defender. I look familiar to you? Hmm. I guess you might’ve been a client of mine.”
::skree-eeek::
Whaaaaaa!?
I might have been a client of his?! Seriously?!
I’m not really sure how the conversation went after that. That comment rattled around in my brain as I continued to chat amicably with him about being a public defender in Riverside, and how hard a job that was. I mentioned that I had a friend who was a D.A. in Riverside, but that was way after his time. I told him that I’m an attorney, but that I don’t practice anymore. He asked me if I did criminal work. I said I didn’t have the stomach for it and that I did insurance coverage work. He said that he had done insurance coverage work for a couple years and found it boring. I said I had enjoyed it and found it academic.
We chatted for a few more minutes, then I said my farewell and told him to enjoy his cigar.
In my head, I was telling him to shove the cigar up his ass.
I mean, really?!
Even now, several hours later, when I think about it, I yell – aloud, mind you – REALLY!?
I mean, COME ON!
Really?
Yes, “really.”
He took one look at me – in my Chanel eyeglasses, my super cute shoes, my sparkly pendant and my oh so articulate manner of speaking — and the first thing that popped into his mind was IMPOVERISHED CRIMINAL. Even though I had specifically said that I thought that I had appeared before him — meaning, “I’m a lawyer, you nitwit!” — he thought, “CRIMINAL.”
And that’s really the thing, isn’t it?
Sometimes, no matter what I do, or what I wear, or how I speak, somebody is going to look at me and my dark skin, and think “Criminal” or “Doesn’t Belong” or “What is she doing here.”
It just happens. It’s happened for as long as I can remember, and I have no doubts that it will continue to happen.
I even coined a term for it: The soft bigotry of silly white people.
[“Black Thing” photo via Gamma Ray Productions]
[cross-posted at ABLC]
[comments closed. you can kiss this black girl’s ass on my blog.]
JR
Wow.
First, cute shoes.
Second, what an enormous douchebag. And I don’t like saying that about someone who spends his time trying to provide some modicum of justice to those who would otherwise be left twisting in the wind, but what an enormous douchebag!
Mary
The guy was an ass. But at least your shoes are super cute! They probably would have looked beautiful coming out of his shiny white hiney.
khead
It’s the shoes. They may be super cute to you – but to me they look like something you stole from my grandmother’s closet.
Now, I’m not sure if I’m a silly white person for thinking that – but I damn sure know my grandma was a silly cracker for wearing a pair of shoes like those.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
This isn’t a black thing, it’s as you said a silly white thing. My favorite is when I meet people who’ve only spoken to me on the phone.
[Blink]
“Oh!”
[Squint, blink]
“Uh … Nice to meet … you?”
Like I’m going to tear off my mask and reveal the white dude underneath.
(And I thought you were going to say he mistook you for a prostitute.)
Brian S
First time I saw that in action I was in college and working at a Mexican restaurant. Answered the phone and the guy on the other end asked to speak to my boss, only he didn’t know she was my boss. He assumed she was one of the cooks, because no way could a black woman (who owned her own business on the side, dontchaknow) could actually be the manager of the restaurant. I put the guy on hold, told her what he’d said, then laughed as she slit him nuts to neck over the phone. It was her son’s football coach.
Brian R.
Actually, if I were to hear someone say they “appeared before” a judge, the first assumption I’d have would be that they were a defendant. Wouldn’t a lawyer say she “had a case before” a judge? (Though I guess you’re a lawyer and would know better.)
Or hell, old white guy and Occam’s razor. Maybe he was just a racist.
Mark S.
Jesus, what an asshole. I would have shot him a look of death.
Warren Terra
7:45 AM? Gawd, that’s brutal. Especially if the commute to get there takes any time at all. Imagine the poor schmucks who normally work the night shift, leaving the house around sunrise to spend an hour on public transportation.
And yes, I’ve ignored the actual meat of the post, because: what is there to say. The man’s clearly an ass, and he’s sadly far from alone in that regard – and that’s leaving aside the more in-your-face sort of aggressive racism of the sort DougJ encountered at his cousin’s wedding in the previous post.
Oh, and nice shoes.
Shinobi
LOVE the shoes. HATE the guy.
Felonious Wench
Troll bait! I’m doing a tequila shot when the first troll post shows up.
David in NY
Why didn’t you wear your juror badge to lunch, for heaven’s sake?
TaMara (BHF)
OMG, totally cute shoes!
As for the rest, all you can say is fuck ’em. Hopefully he felt like the ass he was and was grateful for your compassionate response of NOT shoving the cigar up his ass.
Of course you couldn’t shove it up his ass, there wasn’t room with his big white head already stuffed all the way up there.
Tokyokie
Well, you know, all black folks look alike. Especially to white people who don’t notice the shoes.
lamh34
So I was showing pictures of my family to some other ladies at work (mostly Black) and being from NOLA let’s just say that every shade of black is represented in my immediate family , I mean from cafe au lait, to mocah, to caramel brown etc. So anyway, I was showing the picture to my co-workers and a white co-worker walked up and looked at the photo I was showing and basically ask me if all my aunts and uncles had to same father, because our complexions were so different (my family members though different shades, all resemble each other, in features. You can’t miss the resemblances even with the different shades).
I told her yes they did and I know that this was probably just an innocent question from my co-worker, but it did NOT sit well with me. It actually bothered me most of the day.
So I feel ya ABL. Sometimes people just don’t realize how clueless they sound sometimes.
eastriver
the shoes are maybe cute for Rivertucky.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
You should have been a programmer if you can’t take those early hours.
Nutella
Gee, even though you are a “mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking” gal he assumed you were the defendant? Possibly he also assumes young women couldn’t be lawyers. Sigh.
David in NY
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen — As someone who has been the blinker in a similar exchange, let me say that I hope the initial assumption doesn’t mark me as an unredeemable racist.
khead
@Felonious Wench:
You should’ve already done one back at #3. I thought I was pretty obvious.
Those shoes really look like 1967 Whitebread, WV. Maybe ’77 at the latest. I’m pretty sure my granny wore them to church when I was a kid though. I didn’t know fashion has gone that retro.
freelancer (iPhone)
You’re a literacy advocate?! SWOON!!!
ABL
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: oh, that happened to me when I was 17. A couple of cops almost arrested me.
Felonious Wench
@khead:
Yep, I was writing my post as that one was coming in. I missed it.
Notice, I said I’m stopping at one. If I drank a shot for every new troll post I expect this thread to generate, I’d be dead from alcohol poisoning.
dead existentialist
You know, from this post, I gotta assume you’re an immigrant ’cause nobody guilty of being born black in America would’ve posted this.
It actually surprised you? C’mon, Imani, you can do better. Have another scotch or two and write something flammable.
Primigenius
Umm… As a criminal defense attorney who knows many very capable and sometime brilliant public defenders, we’ve all had the utter joy of defending a poor person charged with a crime who (amazingly, I know) turned out to be innocent. Any of us who have practiced longer than a week or two can tell you story after story of poor people who are caught up in circumstances beyond their control and charged with offenses of which they are (amazingly again, I know) innocent.
Now which turns our pouty lips into a deeper frown… the late-middle-aged public defender who has represented thousands of clients of all races over the years, quite a few of whom were (unaccountably and beyond all conventional wisdom) innocent and may have recognized him somewhere outside the courtroom as their former attorney, or the person on jury duty who doesn’t see the soft bigotry inherent in believing that anyone represented by a public defender is an IMPOVERISHED CRIMINAL?
khead
@Felonious Wench:
Gosh. A new troll? I’m flattered, but not guilty as charged. LOL. Just not digging the shoes.
Plus, if I wanted to really troll, I’d ask why ABL used the term “appeared before” instead of simply poking fun at her granny shoes.
Jane2
The shoes are great!! The guy blows and is not worthy to view those shoes.
gocart mozart
Hope this helps
@Brian R.:
Omnes Omnibus
@khead: “Appeared before” is a perfectly cromulent phrase for a lawyer to use.
Felonious Wench
@khead:
Sigh. I already drank the shot. We need Bender to show up and make an honest woman of me.
Pete
I may be a bigoted white boy, but I think your outrage is justified, and more than a little.
Me? I look at the color of your skin and think it is exactly the shade that millions of us try to get to by frying ourselves in tanning booths. I know there’s this commandment around here somewhere that says “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s complexion,” but you have what a lot of us want.
biznesschic
Thank you. Unfortunately, this is how some of the professional left feel about our president. (Paul Krugman comes to mind?)
I am a CPA, MBA, and when I go to conferences, to keep my certification, white males always ask me directions to the bathrooms.
khead
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, it’s quite a fine term to use.
Now, let’s talk about those shoes….
freelancer (iPhone)
@gocart mozart:
People HATE this movie. I think it’s unfairly maligned amongst all of the Coens’ films. I love how inordinately upset Richard Jenkins keeps getting.
Felonious Wench
@Omnes Omnibus:
I see what you did there.
Equal Opportunity Cynic
I suffer from mild prosopagnosia, so people of any race look pretty much alike to me until i’m somewhat familiar with them.
Omnes Omnibus
@khead: I do not have a problem with the shoes. I know enough about life, about women, and about women who mention that they are wearing cute shoes to know that I do not have a problem with the shoes. If you have any sense, you will find that you also do not have a problem with the shoes. Just sayin’.
Gwiwer
I’m sure I’ll catch all kinds of grief for being sceptical, but I’m going to have to be on this one. Let’s face it, lawyers, though not as rare as highly-esteemed brain surgeons, are still an occupation that’s not overly crowded by any means. I can imagine, if I were a lawyer and someone approached me and said that they thought that I looked familiar in reference to my occupation, I’d be more inclined to assume, “Perhaps this person was a client,” rather than, “Perhaps this person is a fellow lawyer.” Maybe I wouldn’t have said it out loud, but who knows? We’re all guilty of saying things we realize, in retrospect, probably didn’t make us look that good at the time.
I’m also not sold on the idea that, just because someone happens to currently be well dressed, it doesn’t mean they might not have ever required the services of a public defender at some point in their life. A well to do, respectable person in their 30’s or so could have easily once been a poor 20 year old college student who found themselves on the wrong side of the law a decade or so ago on account of some youthful indiscretion or another. Bill Gate’s mugshot photo clearly attests to that. In 1977, he certainly didn’t look like someone who was going to go on to become the richest man in the world.
dead existentialist
The Google generated ads for this post are hilarious!
Shoedazzle and Criminal Records. Hee hee.
khead
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, I’m not trying to fuck anyone here so I don’t have to complement their shoes. Plus, I tend to agree with the poster @ 34 so I figured I’d just make light of the shoes.
Just sayin.
Ruckus
@TaMara (BHF):
It’s quite possible that even if it were explained to him in simple no more than 2 syllable words he would not understand.
Once had a guy fixing a machine for me. He thought he was fixing it for my dad but by then I owned a majority of the biz and was president. Called me lad. In that cracker sort of way, dripping with a mixture of nose in the air disgust, ritual hatred, everyone is inferior, I look down upon everyone in short pants, if I were black the word would have been nigger voice. I was about 29 and signing the check for his work. I did unload on him and told him to stick that lad shit up his ass. He didn’t understand what he had said and why I was upset. I had 5 seconds of this and didn’t worry about any kind of repercussions. Can’t imagine what its like to live one’s whole life like that.
Anne Laurie
He’s a racist, and one old enough to have been taught that wearing bold, sparkly jewelry before sunset or any jewelry with a (quasi)religious motif was “what poor people do“. Most straight men in that age group don’t look at shoes, but they do look at cleavages, and the sorta-cross that read ‘dressed up’ to you read ‘low socioeconomic status’ to him. Stupid, outdated, but not unique.
ETA: Even when we’re wearing that sparkly jewelry over a heavy turtleneck, and/or we don’t have all that much cleavage to cover, yes men we DO know that you’re staring at our chests. At least try to be subtle about it, okay?
Warren Terra
@khead:
FTFY.
ETA My intent was not to bowdlerize; it was to point out that making an effort to disparage someone else’s clothing, which article of clothing they are clearly proud of, is a bit of a dick move. Even if you don’t like it – why would you offend them by saying so?
Marshal T
What does the story have to do with the concept “It’s a black thing?” I’m not making the connection…
khead
@Warren Terra:
Good lord. Give me a fucking break. I’ve been more than friendly in other threads here at BJ. I thought I was doing this thread a favor by making a joke about the shoes instead of making it about ABL’s butthurt about being considered a degenerate by some dumbass she met in a courthouse. BFD. So was I once upon a time (several times) when I looked like a heathen fresh out of southern WV (mullet and all).
Really. Those shoes look like my grandma’s.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
D in NY @ 17. Nope, an irredeemable racist would be pissed because I ruffled his nicely arranged stereotypes.
Also, you’d stick your hand out to shake like you were expecting me to steal your watch.
To be fair, rainbow colored families puzzle African-Americans as well. Many of my childhood fights started like so:
Neighborhood kid sees me getting out of my grandmother’s car.
NK: Who was that lady?
Me: My grandma.
NK: Nuh-uh. She’s black, you’re yellow.
Me: [Violence]
Omnes Omnibus
@khead: My wife wore a rather similar pair of shoes to a wedding earlier this year and you would not believe the number of compliments she received on them.
different church-lady
Pshaw… I don’t trust anyone who wakes up before noon, and nobody’s ever going to mistake me for anything other than Caucasian.
And no, you don’t need to be black to see what’s wrong with cigar man.
hilzoy fangirl
As a public defender, I represent all sorts – including well-dressed attractive young women and older ladies and gentlemen who wouldn’t look out of place seated in their own office at a university. Not everyone who is poor looks “poor;” not everyone who was poor is poor; not everyone who gets a public defender is poor (and not everyone who needs a public defender gets one). When someone looks familiar and I’m trying to figure out why, “former client” is always one of the first possibilities that my mind goes through, regardless of appearances. I don’t know anything about your experience except what you’ve written, but based on what you’ve written I do think there is a plausible innocent explanation for the man’s words.
Ruckus
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
I think actual wars have been started the same way.
Your mama, is never a good way to start a conversation.
khead
@Omnes Omnibus:
Like I said earlier, I apparently hadn’t realized we’d gone THAT retro. I will accept the fashion criticism and rush out to Payless tomorrow to get my wife a pair.
Ben Cisco
Been there, done that. (Traveling in dress blues and lugging a duffel bag, got flagged down in DFW ’cause Col. Sanders’s doppleganger was looking for a skycap.
__
Should also mention that I was part of a group of 10 similarly dressed personnel; oddly enough, I was the one who had to be a skycap.
__
Yes, it’s a black thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@khead: I assume you know that you won’t find them at Payless. Damn, I know way too much about women’s shoes.
different church-lady
Dude, you gotta work on that phone voice — bring out your inner James Earl Jones.
aisce
@ marshall t
hmm. yes. professional white women age 18-45 are frequently assumed to have criminal pasts. like all the time and such.
are you kidding me?
god, you guys are killing me. it’s damn near impossible to make fun of abl without being conflated with your bullshit. and what’s the point of the internet without being able to give strangers shit for pointless things you don’t actually care about?
these fucking threads…
Ruckus
@Ben Cisco:
I’ve seen/heard that before and it boggles my mind that some people are so clueless about the world around them. But then I read about the teapartyers. Is that the reciprocal, it’s a white thing?
ABL
Pffft.
::exits::
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Oh, do say he got pissed when he discovered his mistake. I love it when they get pissed.
“How dare your black ass not be one of the help?” (Alternately, “How dare your black ass cause me to make an ass of myself because naturally I took you for the help?”)
Heh.
khead
@Omnes Omnibus:
Unfortunately, yes. I’ll bet the wife could find some nice knock-offs somewhere….
… but I’d probably give her shit for them too.
Ben Cisco
@Ruckus: For some, but they get a big megaphone.
different church-lady
@ABL: Hey! Get back here so some idiot can berate you for being a shitty blogger!
Ben Cisco
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Actually, I got a twofer. My FRIENDS got pissed, and they were actually the ones to tell Nathan Bedford Forrest Jr. that my name was MR. TIBBS.
__
And yes, that fine gentleman was MIGHTY vexed – think of the scene from “In The Heat of the Night” (not the Sidney Poitier slap, just the look on dude’s face afterward). Something like that.
No one of Importance
@khead: “her granny shoes”
How many grannies do you know who can wear heels like that? And with legs like that? I’m no grandmother and I can’t wear heels at *all*.
ABL, if it’s any consolation, just being him is probably enough punishment for him being a dipshit. I bet his house smells like wee.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Yeah thanks for pointing out my shameful inadequacy. Really.
Care to help me exhume my inner JEJ from the thick layer of EuroDNA around my vocal cords?
Omnes Omnibus
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Speak from the diaphragm.
different church-lady
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Sorry — I didn’t know it was that bad. Have you considered surgery?
Brad
@biznesschic: So I guess Robin Wells is just an Uncle Tom?
different church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: That. And growl and purr as exercise for the v-chords.
Omnes Omnibus
@different church-lady: Speaking from the diaphragm just allows me to project my voice. I still sound like a preppy.
fraught
My friend Kim and I sit on the park bench in our neighborhood and drink coffee nearly every morning. I’m 70, white, male, retired. She’s 33, black, a documentary film maker. Since we live in a largely white, Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn, we’re an odd pairing. Or so I thought. “Do you think some people think we’re a couple?” I idly asked one day.
“Us? A couple?” she said. “They think you’re some old white guy with Alzheimers and I’m your health care aide. That’s what they think.”
“Oh,” I said feeling crushed for both of us.
Omnes Omnibus
@fraught: Sorry, but I had to laugh.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Ben S @ 61 – What a wonderful bedtime story.
Smartasses @ 64, 65 & 67 – Thanks for the tips. Don’t blame me when my new improved voice makes you drop your pants.
Also, too, I can’t believe we’re approaching comment 70 and no one has linked this song by Living Colour.
d. b. cooper
You said “appeared before” when you thought he was a judge. I woulda thought the same thing no matter your color. Then again I’m white :)
Carolina Dave
OK. First, I come here to comment as someone who doesn’t know or appreciate shoes, but I do know women who do. So I get exposed to lots of great dress shoes. Some stylish, some bold, and some very expensive. And that is great. But I don’t know, can’t tell, and don’t care what is truly stylish or what makes a woman look cheap. I don’t know enough to judge. So, it is likely your 60ish cigar smoking public defender knows and cares less than I just based on a demographic stereotype of his age, profession and race.
dekster
Could you maybe explain what it is that white people would not understand? It seems to me that you explained the episode very well. It was unjust, disgusting behavior from the old white dude. I certainly agree that white folks won’t think about this kind of experience that black people have all the time, until black people remind them or point it out — and that’s very bad — but now that you have said “Hey look at this” and described it very well . . . it certainly seems to me like I understood it.
So — and I mean this completely seriously — since your thesis in this post is that white people just would not understand, could you explain maybe what further thing about the episode I don’t get, on account of me not having the right kind of life experience?
different church-lady
[cackle-out-loud!]
Speaking of cackle out loud, that video always made me cackle like crazy, even as I was flinching. Yes, they play it for laughs, but it also cuts like hell knowing some white people actually DO act like that, if not even worse. I can only imagine what it would be like to have to put up with that BS every day of my life.
Omnes Omnibus
@dekster: I don’t think it is that white people won’t understand, I think the point is that the situation is unlikely to happen to us. If I, a now 47 year old, white, upper middle class looking guy, started the same conversation, it would not have led to an assumption that I had been a client. We would have figured out quickly that we both were lawyers and the discussion would have followed a completely different path.
Mutaman
What exactly is “insurance coverage work”?
burnspbesq
You think Americans are bad about this shit?
Early in my IRS career, I had a multi-day trial in downtown LA, and the trial team was given permission to stay overnight so that we didn’t have to schlep back and forth from OC. My second chair was a very very smart (graduated with honors from Howard) and reasonably attractive younger African American attorney. The closest decent hotel to the Roybal Building is the New Otani, the hotel of choice for lower and mid-level Japanese business people. I have no idea how to describe the looks that she got from the Japanese people in the public spaces of that hotel. It creeped me out so much that I never stayed there again.
Brian S
@dekster:
One important thing to take away from posts of this type is that if you understand it, then it’s probably not being directed at you. But if you scan through the comments here, there are some (tho fewer than in most ABL threads in my experience) who don’t get it, and who therefore might need it spelled out for them.
Yutsano
@Ben Cisco:
You just made me growl Emissary. :)
@Omnes Omnibus:
There is no shame in being a tenor you know. We get the sweet opera roles.
suzanne
The shoes are adorable.
ABL, I adore the intellectual and sartorial contributions you make to this blog.
suzanne
Hilariously, the banner ad at the top of the page is exhorting me to “MeetRealGUYS”, and festooning the deKooning-esque whiteness of the top of the page with photos of black men wearing sunglasses, baseball caps, and prominent bling.
burnspbesq
@Mutaman:
Typically involves disputes over whether a particular loss is within what is covered by an insurance policy, to what extent it is covered, by which policy it is covered, whether any insurance company has the obligation to pay for legal defense, etc.
The real fun cases (I’m told) involve figuring out which one or more of multiple reinsurance companies have to step up to the plate and reimburse the primary insurer.
High-stakes arguments involving the interpretation of the most arcane and opaque contracts known to man. I do international tax, which has its own set of challenges, and you couldn’t pay me enough to do coverage work.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Sure, tenor is fine. Add in slightly nasal with an accent that sound like I am from somewhere else but probably the Northeast or maybe the Midwest. Look at it this way, I sound much like James Spader in an 80s teen flick. Or, as one ex-gf said, I sound like Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons.
ETA: I finished the Grey Goose Citron a little while ago and now into the palinka (Romanian moonshine).
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
And it is, needless to say, beyond your control.
Carolina Dave
He was about 60 years old, rotund, and sporting suspenders and a bowtie. He looked familiar. I kept furtively glancing at him, trying to figure out whether I knew him, and if so, how. I couldn’t place him, and since I was in a chatty mood, I struck up a conversation.
“Do you come here a lot?”
Yeah, I know. What kind of question is that? Who asks that of someone they are clearly not hitting on?
yada yada yada
He looked at me and said, “I’m not a judge. I’m a public defender. I look familiar to you? Hmm. I guess you might’ve been a client of mine.”
I even coined a term for it:
The soft bigotry of silly white people.
I embrace the term. silly could be improved upon perhaps.
It describes many actions and comments I have seen, heard, said, witnessed or participated in.
From your description, it looks like a fellow attorney decided to converse with you, maybe to hit upon you. Having not been privy to all the gestures, voice inflection, eye contact and all that takes place in a personal encounter, I am left with only the quotes you convey.
Based upon your earlier description of the man, I would find that you would share little in common with him, so his approach would be unusal. Maybe he was an admirer of art or beauty. The cross on your neck was stunning!
In conversation, he was clearly taken aback and said something perhaps just to respond. I and you can never truly know the man’s intentions.
you were there and I was not. It sounds a little creepy, sure, but maybe it was flattery. Did he approach and speak with you with respect?
My lone possible suggestion is instead of the default being the “angry” black lady, just be the black lady. And than laugh at the “silly” 60 years old, rotund, and sporting suspenders and a bowtie WHITE GUY.
There is no need to get upset. It is silly this guy would hit on you, but not silly that he might see a beautiful, stylish, art-wearing, woman worth chatting up while on a break from work.
Laughing with an “are you serious?” to the man may have moved the conversation forward or to an end. He sounds like a clueless old man. So your term is accurate.
But next time, either laugh it off or engage the good man in further conversation and help him understand. You are both attorneys, it is possible you would have had a sympathic ear for the 7:45 BS
Not everybody of that demograpic is a Tea Bagger.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Of course.
Anonne
Cute shoes. Maybe you just clean up really well.
cxs
@Omnes Omnibus: OT, but happy birthday Omnes! (Signed a west coast lawyer with a desperate crush on your mind)
Omnes Omnibus
@cxs: Thank you. Eight more minutes of it here. [As far as the rest… one blushes.]
Unrelatedly, I am now on a Dire Straits kick.
Yutsano
@cxs: Just for the record, he is recently available.
@Omnes Omnibus: I also just realized the opportunity to re-grow the Hugh Grant style locks is presenting itself.
cxs
@Yutsano: I’ve been following Omnes story, but despite my crush I’m hoping everything works out for him. If not… ;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: FWIW. A haircut was recently arranged to trim back and sides while growing the rest. Same thing I did when growing out my highly motivated Army Airborne hair. The thing is there are now flecks of gray at the temple. Just a few, but they are there.
Yutsano
@cxs: I shall just choose to whistle innocently here.
I need to dash to the store. Still need a couple of final items before the gyro fest tomorrow.
@Omnes Omnibus:
I come from a family of premature greyers. My first was at 25. When I was in college a fellow tuba player took great joy in finding them and plucking them out. And I have black hair. I know of which you speak.
Omnes Omnibus
@cxs: One isn’t sure whether one should be flattered or afeared.
cxs
@Omnes Omnibus: Flattered- I’m harmless. Enough derailing, back to my mediation brief. Sigh.
Love the shoes ABL.
Omnes Omnibus
@cxs: I have done 40 hours of mediation training, but never actually done a mediation. I have never had a client I considered a good candidate for it.
Donald G
Not exactly the same thing since I’m a white guy, but while my wife was in grad school in the English department, I took a continuing education class that met in the building which housed the business school. I was in my mid-late twenties, artsy with longish hair and a beard, though I tended to dress 80’s prep-ish, but inexpensively.
As I was a young father who spent the day tending to our child while the wife attended classes and studied, I would head over to the business school early to get myself in an academic frame of mind. Now, our child and I were often on campus for various reasons – we lived two blocks away from the English department and we were always visiting my wife and her colleagues in the lounge or in their offices, so I was comfortable on campus.
Anyway, I showed up about an hour before my class was to meet and was hanging out in the public areas and one of the cleaning ladies grew became suspicious of me and called the Campus Police.
I was interrogated. I explained why I was there, that I lived in the house on the corner across the parking lot, that I was often on campus for one purpose or another. THey held me, then asked the teacher of my continuing ed class about me. She confirmed my story, and that I was one of her best students and so on. (Older German ladies just love me… I remind them of their sons.)
Anyway, the campus cop basically told me that – based on my appearance – if I had been in the Art Department or one of the other humanities buildings, no one would probably had gotten suspicious of me. I just didn’t look like I belonged in the Business building, even though I had legitimate business for being on campus.
After a decade of living in Appalachia after that event and the ravages of age, I look even more low-rent and countrified… and yes, I do feel uncomfortable around cops and in upscale environs.
Another funny thing… no matter where I am, people just assume I work there, or they ask me for directions, or they tell me their life’s stories or ask me for money. I don’t get it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: My dad and his mom were gray by 30. My younger brother was gray around 35. I didn’t see any gray until I was 45. I just thing that now that I have some gray, the Hugh Grant floppy hair of my 30s is iffy.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not so much. Have you seen Hugh Grant lately?
(Yes I should get moving. Yes I’m being a lazy ass.)
cxs
@Omnes Omnibus: I didn’t get a choice-the court ordered it before I came on board. So far this is the probate of the damned. Opposing counsel is out to jack up her billings, she’s not that bright or ethical, and we had to reschedule my client’s deposition after the court reporter threw up. I expect the mediator’s office to explode in flames.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano:
He has changed the signature style.
ETA: Who am I to criticize someone for being a lazy ass?
Omnes Omnibus
@cxs: Sorry, it may be the booze talking but vomiting court reporters make me laugh.
WyldPirate
@biznesschic:
That statement is just a load of unmitigated horseshit. You have ZERO evidence that Krugman’s criticism of Obama’s political and economic blunders (of which there are many) have anything to do with racism on Krugman’s part.
Instead, you seem to have your knickers in a knot BECAUSE of the criticism of Obama.
So what is the deal? Is legitimate criticism of Obama off-limits because of his race? It would seem that with with some of the people here.
Some of you are no better than the Dubya worshipers. simple Partisan blindness and stupidity are a dangerous mix and some here are eaten up with it.
cxs
@Omnes Omnibus: It was very hard not to laugh and I was sober, but the poor woman was so mortified. The receptionist got to clean it up and joked about building his resume.
Lysana
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m on the other side of that. I started graying around the age of 13. I am now 43 and have more gray hair than my 77-year-old mother-in-law. My Irish ancestry gave me early gray and a butt that proves we’re the other blacks of Europe (alongside the Portuguese).
Omnes Omnibus
@Lysana: I believe I take after my mom’s side of the family. Both the French-Canadians (arrived in the very early 1600s) and the Germans grayed late. The New England Puritans grayed young. I make no judgments based on any of this.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lysana: The Commitments reference?
Marshal T
@aisce
Do I need to waive my liberal card to get an answer around here and not be swatted aside by some loony tune who’s kissing the black girl’s ass? Honestly, some of you people are so patronizing to ABL that it’s disgusting.
I simply don’t understand the connection between the story and the phrase “It’s a black thing.” The fact that this mere statement was troll-bait speaks to the intense mutual masturbation session that some of these Balloon-Juice comment threads can turn into.
Omnes Omnibus
@Marshal T: FWIW I think I talked about that earlier.
ruemara
@Marshal T:
Dude, fuck you very, very much. Jackass.
Binky the perspicacious bear
Lots of people use the public defender’s office. Is it only people of color who can’t afford lawyers in California? Must be nice.
Greg
I’m going to chime in with the minority of people here who think it wasn’t necessarily racial. You said you knew him from somewhere, and by asking if he was a judge you implied that it was in a court context, not say your kid’s soccer practice. He’s a public defender, so that seems like the most likely way you would know him. “Appeared before you” also doesn’t imply “as a lawyer” to me, it can just as easily apply to a defendant.
It’s possible I’m just being a clueless white guy by not seeing it. But wouldn’t that also mean other people could be equally clueless and thus say something insensitive without realizing it or meaning anything by it?
Omnes Omnibus
@Greg: The problem with what you are saying is just that the racism exhibited by the PD was unconscious rather than out in the open.
Gwiwer
I don’t doubt that this kind of racism does still exist at disturbingly high levels in society, and it really wouldn’t surprise me if the guy was actually being racist, perhaps without even intentionally realizing it, but it’s been pointed out by myself and others (more eloquently than me, I’ll humbly admit) that there was plenty of reasonable reasons for him to have said what he did without having meant anything racist by it. No one has bothered to counter any of these points and have essentially chosen to just pull the typical ad hominem tactic of accusing the people who made the points of being idiots, assholes, racists and etc. I have no problem with shaming racism where ever it’s encountered, but the points raised suggesting this guy may not actually even be racist bother me. I’m not going to condemn someone as a racist based on the facts provided because of the various points raised that potentially suggest there wasn’t even any racism intended. So, I don’t know, it might be a good idea to actually counter the points raised rather than just calling everyone who made them a racist idiotic asshole.
NobodySpecial
I’m curious as to why ABL originally thought he was a judge. Was that just because he was an older white man?
Omnes Omnibus
@NobodySpecial: He was wearing a judge’s wig. Obviously.
fuckwit
Maybe she thought he was a judge because he was an aloof, standoffish, arrogant prick.
Mnemosyne
@Gwiwer:
Here’s the thing: there’s always enough plausible deniability to casual racism to make people think they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s only when you stop and think for a minute that it dawns on you that, “Hey, this guy was making a racial assumption.”
ABL and I are the same age group and the same social class, but I absolutely guarantee-damn-tee you that this same guy would never have made the assumption that I had been one of his clients, because I am obviously white and middle-class along with being middle-aged. (Yes, white people need public defenders, too, but vanishingly few middle-class, college-educated, late 30s white people use them.)
This is what a lot of people forget about race in this country: it is automatically tied up with class implications. In this country, if you’re white, you’re automatically assumed to be middle-class unless you demonstrate otherwise (like by having long hair and a beard while walking around a business school). Conversely, if you’re black, you’re automatically assumed to be lower class, and you generally have to do a whole lot of demonstrating otherwise.
That’s why this guy assumed ABL had been one of his clients and not that she was a fellow lawyer — he looked at her skin color and made a class assumption, because skin color is how our social classes are primarily delineated.
Did he do this maliciously? No, almost certainly not. But because our class assumptions and our race assumptions are tangled together, he made an assumption about ABL’s class (must be working-class, could be a former client) based on her skin color. Which is, surprise surprise, a racist assumption to make.
Now, no one is going to jump out from behind a pillar and scream, “Racist!” at this guy. ABL just shook her head and wrote a funny post about it afterwards. But what we can do as reasonable people is look at this story, look at the assumptions he made, and look at ourselves to see where and when we’ve made similar assumptions about people that turned out to be wrong. And then hopefully writhe in retroactive embarrassment at our stupidity and vow not to do it again, because if we just rationalize it away (“Well, how was I supposed to know she was a lawyer? Did you see those shoes?”), we’ll never be able to grow past those first knee-jerk assumptions about who someone must be based on their skin color.
Yutsano
I’m just gonna say it, right now: I make a fucking amazing tzatziki. The baby sheep ain’t bad either.
Mnemosyne
@NobodySpecial:
The answer to that question is cleverly hidden in the story.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: I believe you. Now, how do I go about getting a gyro?
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Sneak into my work tomorrow. That’s what I’m making it for. :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Long ass drive…. I might just have to go to a gyro place here in Madison.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: It might be better. We’re all using each other as guinea pigs tomorrow so it could be entertaining. Having said that, I did try a sample bit of the gyro meat for seasoning. The sacrifices I make. :)
Jager
When I was the pale half of a mixed race couple. We spent a week on St Barts, one afternoon my beautiful, classy girlfriend was walking down the hall of our hotel in sandals and a lovely white beach cover up. As she later put it, “some saggy-assed white bitch stuck her head out of the door of her room and asked me to get her some extra fucking towels”! I asked her how she responded she told me “with the one finger salute”…very out context for her, but what a woman! For the next 4 days I kept hounding her about extra towels, we had a great time!
Mack Lyons
@Marshal T: You’re probably one of those one-off hit-and-run types, so I won’t concern myself with you or your comments.
Yutsano
@Mack Lyons: Yeah. We do tend to get a lot of those, especially when we get cross-posted somewhere.
opie jeanne
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Ah crap, we still get the “who’s the daddy of all three children” because there is a large space of 8 years between the first two and another four years between the middle and last kid, and we’re white, the kids all look like us and each other and the kids range from 41 to 27 years old now.
This still pisses me the hell off; I can’t imagine how pissed off I’d be if it were because of a rainbow of skin colors.
LosGatosCA
Actually he may very well have taken in your whole outfit including your shoes.
And then assumed you shoplifted all of it – same as that time he had to defend you, most likely – deducing this using his finely honed legal instincts.
It’s quite possible that the only people that talk to him outside the courtroom are ex-defendants and since you weren’t yelling at him or brandishing a weapon in his direction he had actually thought he had been able to get you acquitted.
But you dashed his fleeting feeling of validation by refusing to cooperate.
Bet you never thought of his feelings.
opie jeanne
@Yutsano: You played tuba in college? I am both impressed and amused. I played the clarinet; it weighs less.
opie jeanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I’m kind of tired of people making excuses for the guy. They are questioning ABL’s right to be offended by offensive behavior.
opie jeanne
@Yutsano: Oh, man! I really do want some.
Gwiwer
@Mnemosyne: In this instance, I see absolutely no reason to think the guy wouldn’t have assumed any other person was a previous client unless they were holding a briefcase embossed with the name of the law firm they work for or something. It’s a perfectly reasonable assumption and there’s absolutely nothing to suggest he made it based on any negative stereo-type. I know I, for one, don’t go through life assuming everyone I meet is a lawyer. In his career, I’d be willing to bet he’s defended people from many diverse ethnicities and backgrounds. You don’t need to be poor, black, and guilty to need a public defender. My white, male, middle-class, 40 year old, possibly innocent, neighbor is currently using one on account of the fact that the economy sucks, his family isn’t on his side, and getting arrested cost him his job.
My mother was a teacher for 30 something years before she retired. She frequently meets ex-students while out places, some of whom can be quite old by now. Whenever someone approaches her asking if she remembers them, her first question is, “What year did I teach you?” That’s what she did for her entire adult life and she makes the reasonable assumption that that is why random people would know her. Based on your logic, if a black woman were to approach her some day and say, “Hey, did you ever teach at whatever elementary school? Don’t I know you?” and my mother instantly assumes this person is an ex-student, my mother must be racist for making that assumption. Because, hey, black people can be teachers, TSS workers, school nurses, guidance counselors, school psychologists, PTA mothers, or whatever! My mother must have instantly assumed a black woman couldn’t possibly hold down such an upper middle-class job as those, right? It couldn’t possibly just be that she assumed she had taught the woman because that just happens to be the first thing to come to mind in that situation, and the most likely thing the vast majority of the time.
As long as we are getting to make arbitrary assumptions about this guy’s motives, I think I’ll believe that he’s actually a despicable sexist pig who just doesn’t think that pretty women have the intellectual ability to make it through law school. No, no, hold on… I got a better one. He’s actually agist. He doesn’t think young people these days have the morals, intelligence, or drive to aspire to anything like being a lawyer. Yep, that’s the one I’m going to go with.
Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
Well, I’m sorry for having your mood brought down by some thoughtless blather from some thoughtless guy.
And to be truthful, I can see the argument some are making: young kid, black, mouthed off to a cop who was harassing her for no reason, got charged with some lame-ass “crime”, lawyer guy defended her, got her off; some while later, he runs into somebody who seems to know him but doesn’t know how, she’s well dressed, seems successful, he assumes maybe she had a lot of potential when he defended her against a shit charge and she’s come into her own. Hell, depending on where he works, half of his clients could be random minorities who get roughed up for looking at the police the “wrong” way.
But even so… Especially so, if what I wrote about his defending blameless people against shit charges, he should be a little more careful to bring it up like that so lightly. Presumably, even to somebody he helped get off from a charge, it’s likely to be a sore spot. He could have just said “I’m a lawyer; I wondered whether you might have been one of my clients once.”
So even though the guy is doing the Lord’s work, representing the poorest among us and these who can least stand up for themselves among us–and I’m glad he is; I’m thankful for that–he needs to be a little more aware of how his clients are going to feel about the system he’s helped them through. It’s a job for him, but it’s a life, a livelihood and the threat of losing all that to the defendent. For all the good work he does when he’s working, he needs to do the same good work when he isn’t.
And once again, the one who gets to choose how to react to this is the black lady who has seen racism showered upon her her whole life as white people like me never will. She, not I, has the best eye and ear for picking up on racism. She, not I, knows instinctively when that little joke that seems so innocent is really a vicious jab, wrapped up in a nice sheet of plausible deniability.
It hurts me when I read about some clown mouthing off this way, or doing something even worse, since that never “reflects” on the rest of us whiteys. We’re off the hook. It hurts me because when some black asshole does something vile, or some hispanic guy does somethingn vile, the black guy “represents” his community (I hate that word when used that wasy, but I don’t know of any better one), and the Hispanic guy “represents” his community. They all have to get tarred by these two guys’ misdeeds.
That doesn’t happen to us, even when some asshole shoots children in a church on Sunday, since he wanted to kill all the blacks and all the liberals, but he could only do that much. Remember that? That was about 2 or 3 years ago, in Tennessee. By all rights, we whites should have that guy hung around our necks. James Earl Ray? He should be weighting me down through life as a white guy. Eric Rudolf? Timothy McVeigh? Same with them.
But it doesn’t happen. Those guys are just one-offs, abberations; it’s the minorities whose bad guys get to speak for the millions of people who will never meet them, and are nothing like them, but happen to share a few superficial physical traits, and sometimes like the same kind of food or music or whatever. It’s always the same: We’re individuals. We think for ourselves. They’re all the same. They just do and think whatever the latest poverty pimp tells them to do and think.
Sometimes I wish we white people had to answer for our worst sociopaths, the ones we never met or even heard of before they went off, the way minorities do for theirs. Part of it is that it seems only fair. But part of it is that if we whites had to go through all this shit as often as minorities do, maybe we at last would wake up and see how dumb it is, and maybe we as a society could get to where we don’t feel like anybody, of whatever race, needs to “answer” for some shitty asshole who pulls off some atrocity. I’d be willing to take my lumps for these Huttarree nuts or for Dick Cheney if it would help bring an end to this bullshit.
Hell, I’ve wandered pretty far afield here; sorry. All I really meant to say was that even though there might have been an innocent explanation for why Mr. Cigar Man said what he said, I think it’s still up to ABL to interpret it how she thinks is right. I’d trust her over any of the rest of us who weren’t there, and even more over any of us who aren’t black and don’t live with this stuff every day.
Yutsano
@opie jeanne: 915 2nd Avenue, I’ll be there shortly before noon. Even the traffic isn’t too horrible at that time.
My primary hon was oboe. You don’t march those. And marching is fun.
Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Gwiwer:
Jeez, did you even read what you wrote? Did you read–and were you willing to open your mind a little when you read it–what everybody else has been writing? since, no, a teacher assuming that some younger black person she meets whom she knew from long ago was once a student is not racist, and your comparing that to what ABL wrote about makes me think you’re bending over backwards to not get the point. Is that truly the best you can do?
ABL
Jesus Fucking Christ.
“I may have appeared before you” is not — under any circumstances that I’ve ever experienced or heard of — something a client says to his or her lawyer.
Got it?
Anyone else want to replace my explanation of my experience, borne of 37 years of experience with their own cockamamie theory of what really happened?
The incident wasn’t a big deal. I shrugged it off. THought it might make a good post, so I wrote it up. I enjoyed writing it. And then I made the dumb fucking decision to post it over here.
Assholes.
Gwiwer
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Well, I will say it doesn’t bother me that ABL feels the way she does about the incident. I can understand where she’s coming from and that’s her prerogative.
As I’ve said, I’m actually inclined to think the guy probably was being racist, but it bothered me how quickly and completely everyone in the comments started piling on and throwing out assumptions and accusations about this guy’s character without really having any direct evidence regarding why he behaved the way he did. Maybe it was sexism. Maybe he was just having a bad day and felt like being a prick. I dunno, but I’m not going to condemn someone as a racist without actually, you know, being sure they actually are one. Throwing around accusations like that doesn’t always end well. Especially when the guy on the receiving end has a law degree…
ABL
no there wasn’t.
no there fucking wasn’t.
Gwiwer
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): A lawyer assuming someone might once have been their client isn’t inherently racist either.
ABL
::blank stare::
rb
Pretty gross.
On the other hand it’s sad that the default profile we apparently have for the client of a public defender is “IMPOVERISHED CRIMINAL.” I hope he himself doesn’t make the same assumption as a matter of course.
Kewalo
@fraught:
This is freaken hilarious and the thread really needed the humor. Thank you!
Lysana
@Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
THIS. This, this, motherfucking THIS.