I am a liberal who lives in a conservative community. Don’t ask. I’m here for the beach, not the people. Right now, our neighborhood is less sand and more of a sea of McCain/Palin yard signs.
Our home is barren of political banners not for fear of standing out but due to a lack of willingness to invest time in decorating anything. We don’t decorate for Halloween, Chanukah, or Christmas, why should we decorate for election season?
A neighbor I had already pegged as a racist from generalizations he has made about various ethnicities in passing, stopped me on my walk to inquire about our lack of patriotic décor and the conversation went something like this:
Racist neighbor: Did you forget to put up the Mccain/Palin sign that was left for you?
ME: No.
RN:: What are you, a nigger lover?
Until now, I had been walking while he was talking. Now I am stopped. I take a breath and ask my higher self for guidance in how to answer this assault. This is my first time outside in over a week, as I’m recovering from pneumonia. I am short on patience but want to deal with this effectively. So I turn to him and say …
ME: Define Nigger.
RN: You know what a nigger is. A blacky. That Muslim lovin’ Osama Obama.\
Me: You mean Senator Barack Obama, who is half white and half black?
RN: His skin is black.
ME. Did you know that I am also ethnically mixed with black and white?
RN: No way! Really? I knew you weren’t white but I thought maybe you were just Mexican, Greek, or Armenian. I didn’t think you had black in ya.
ME. Yup, I do.
RN: But you don’t look it so it don’t matter.
Me: What if I feel it?
RN: What? That don’t make no sense. Anyway, how come your kid looks so white?
(My daughter looks nothing like me in coloring. People have gone so far as to ask if she is my biological child.)
