The Nation justice correspondent Elie Mystal recently experienced something that has only made him even more nervous about re-entering society as COVID19 vaccinations become more common and the pandemic winds down.
And he’d like to tell you about it:
Waiting in the CVS parking lot, this old white lady drives by, rolls down her window, and shouts at this black girl with a bag (clearly waiting for her ride:
"Is this where you get the vaccines?"
Black girl (couldn't have been more than 16) says nothing, goes back into phone…— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 21, 2021
White lady "I SAID, Is this where you get the vaccines?"
Girl now does an elaborate *look behind to see if there is somebody else this lady should be talking to*, LIKE AN EMPLOYEE. Says nothing.
White lady, screaming at the top of her lungs "IS THIS WHERE YOU GET THE VACCINES"…— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 21, 2021
Now people behind her in the lot start honking at her. She yells "THE SERVICE" as she rolls up her window and drives off.
To recap: Old white lady shouts herself out of vaccine information after assuming every random black person she sees is put on earth to help her…
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 21, 2021
(White customers have most definitely never been mistaken for store employees, obviously.)
I would have helped, mainly to save the Black girl from having to deal with this bullcrap. But, I had my kids in the car, and that conversation goes 2 ways:
A: yes. [lady drives off]
B: yes [Lady decides I'm "the help" and wishes she hadn't]
Couldn't risk convo B with the kiddos— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 21, 2021
Anyway, I am NOT ready for re-entry. I've basically enjoyed a year without the background racism of this society in my day to day life and… I'm *really* not looking forward to dealing with that kind of white person again.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 21, 2021
Sounds like that old white lady was pretty rude (so weird to encounter rude old ladies in New York City!). Was she racist? That’s less clear. And it certainly doesn’t seem intellectually honest to use that experience to impugn white people as a whole.
In fact, that seems pretty … what’s the word we’re looking for? Oh, right: racist.
Now in post form https://t.co/dOtGjX9Gnl
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 23, 2021
Mystal writes:
I’ve said, here and elsewhere, that one of the principal benefits of the pandemic is how I’ve been able to exclude racism and whiteness generally from my day-to-day life. Over the past year, I have, of course, still had to interact with white people on Zoom or watch them on television or worry about whether they would succeed in reelecting a white-supremacist president. But white people aren’t in my face all of the time. I can, more or less, only deal with whiteness when I want to. Their cops aren’t hunting me when I drive through my neighborhood; their hang-ups aren’t bothering me (or threatening me) when I’m just trying to do some shopping.
That’s because I haven’t been driving or shopping in person. White people haven’t improved; I’ve just been able to limit my exposure to them. I’ve turned my house into Wakanda: a technically advanced, globally isolated home base from which I can pick and choose when and how often to interact with white people.
To be clear, it’s not that most or even many of my interactions with white people are “bad”; it’s that I’m able to choose when to expose myself to interactions with potentially bad white people. That choice is a privilege I’ve never really had until this past year. Going out into white society for me is a little bit like a beekeeper going to get honey. I know what I’m doing: If I put on the right protection and blow enough smoke, most of the bees will leave me alone and the ones who don’t won’t really cause me that much pain. But I’ve got to put on the suit and the hat with the mesh and carry the smoke machine and be careful every time I want some goddamn honey. This year, it’s been like somebody said, “You know the honey comes in bottles now, right? You don’t have to risk being stung every time you want some food.”
So, white people are like bees that you need to protect yourself from. Got it, Elie.
Amazing how magazines are now quite happy to publish baldly racist tracts like this one. Reverse the races and this could be from a neofascist site.https://t.co/FBO3VNqitl
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) March 24, 2021
Here’s Elie Mystal making sweeping generalizations about white people, suggesting that, at best, they’re not aware of their own inherent racism and, at worst, black people aren’t safe around them.
?♀️ pic.twitter.com/sE4smTgwyl
— Alyss 42 (@Calyss11) March 24, 2021
Replace “white” with “black” and these could be published in Der Stormer. https://t.co/7FB5vZhHWZ
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) March 24, 2021
Replace "white fragility" with "intellectual growth" and you'd still have a column.
— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 24, 2021
Pointing out that being upset about being in the company of white people is “white fragility”? Sounds like it’s Elie Mystal whose intellectual growth is stunted.
I sometimes wonder if tripe like this are parody pieces by Far right groups wanting to stoke the fires. In fairness i stopped reading 5 paragraphs in , so it may have turned around spectacularly.
— Scott …….just Scott for now (@Scareywrestrock) March 24, 2021
It did not.
— Russell Nickman (@RussNickman) March 24, 2021
Boy his anecdote is awful. Everyone has been in that situation before regardless of color. People are idiots, not necessarily racist
— Mikey G (@MikeyGalv) March 24, 2021
I used to think diversity was a strength, it is what I was taught and I believed it, still believe it. But articles like this say to me segregation is the way to go. Are people really this unhappy living in a diverse society? It seems they are.
— elise Reynolds (@emrtechnet) March 24, 2021
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