Black Cop, Drunk Jew, White City
In my previous column, I mentioned, somewhat in passing, the importance of being aware of one’s own biases. While the average human can never truly be bias-free, and keeping in mind that some biases are less unfounded than others, it’s nevertheless helpful, to be honest with ourselves about whatever biases we have. For me, as a child, I always identified with authority figures. As a young movie buff, I rooted for the cops to catch Bonnie and Clyde, I thought Dean Wormer was being way too lenient with the drunken statutory rapists who were bringing down the GPA at Faber, I would have been the first one to blackball disrespectful loudmouth Al Czervic from Bushwood, and c’mon, has anyone considered the effect on market stability and job creation should the Empire and its orderly rule be replaced by a group of desert-dwelling theocratic nerf herders?
Needless to say, in any “cop vs. citizen” conflict, my bias has always compelled me to take the cop’s side. Plus, there’s a bias I learned from going to school with thousands of wacky-named black folks. Having had friends named Lushus, Yoonique, and Prinsesses, when I hear someone named Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds make claims about a traffic stop went bad, my inclination is to immediately write her off as completely full of shit.
But sometimes life has a way of kicking your biases right in the drumstick ’n’ biscuits.
In 2003, I decided to move to El Segundo. Don’t let the name fool you—there’s nary a Mexican in sight. The town was named after the Chevron refinery that employs many of its residents. But don’t let that fool you, either. Far from a rough-and-tumble blue-collar burg, El Segundo is a sleepy beach community with one of the lowest crime rates in the U.S. Thanks in part to its isolation, bordered on the west by the ocean, the south by the refinery, the north by LAX, and the east by Northrop Grumman and L.A. Air Force Base, El Segundo is left alone by almost everyone who doesn’t live there. The beaches are deserted, the Laundromat is open 24/7 with no security guard, and the post office lobby requires no after-hours key to enter.
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El Segundo can’t trumpet the fact that it’s majority white; that would be “racist.” So instead, when you move there, you get a welcome package of “fun facts” about the city, including, coincidentally, the population stats. When I moved there in 2003, the population of 13,000 was approximately 85% white, 6% Asian, and the rest “other.” El Segundo cops have a reputation for being hard-assed. But armed with my white privilege and Jew card, I drunk-walked through that town for almost two years without incident. Cops, all white, would often see me wobble-walking down the residential streets at 3 a.m. They’d wave, I’d wave back.
Twenty months, never a hassle. I left at the end of 2004.
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