I'm Not A Racist. But...

Yesterday I looked in the mirror and saw my overgrown furry eyebrows staring back at me. I'd already been thinking of getting my nails done but I was feeling a bit lazy. Seeing the fur really sealed the deal though. It was clearly time to head over to my local Silver Lake beauty shop, the same place I've been going for the past seven years.

When I get my nails/waxing done, I don't have much to say. I just want to chill out and leave a big tip. Occasionally I'll get to talking with the ladies that work there about our kids, but really, I just want them rip the hair away and make my nails look cute.

So, I'm watching TV, my freshly painted nails are drying, I'm reminiscing about seeing Depeche Mode in Las Vegas this time last year. Life is good.

And then I overhear this very blond, very, "Where'd I set my BlackBerry?" type, chatting with the women working on her hands and feet.

"So what's your name?" she asked the lady scrubbing away her heel calluses.

The woman paused her scrubbing and said in her lightly accented English, "My name is May."

Blondie started talking very loudly and very s.l.o.w.l.y --the kind of condescending voice I've heard used before with the very deaf and elderly, the very stupid...and people whose native language isn't English.

"Oh, May. That's -- a -- nice -- name. What -- country -- do -- you -- come -- from, -- May? Cambodia?"

Now, if I was May, I'd have been trying to give Blondie a foot fungus or something. But May was nice and replied, "I'm from Vietnam."

What Blondie doesn't know is that May has been here for 15 years. She got here in 1992. She's got two teenage sons that she's putting through a private high school and her English is really good.

Blondie continued her painful chatter. "I was close! Vietnam! It's sort of like Cambodia, right? Are you sure you're not Cambodian? I mean, you all look really similar to Cambodians, don't you?"

It was said with the kind of authority that let me know that Blondie fully expected May to agree with her. And May wasn't going to call her out and say, "All Asians don't look alike and bitch, I said I'm Vietnamese." May wasn't going to ask Blondie if she meets Germans and tells them, "Are you sure you're not from France?"

May pretended she didn't understand. She just smiled and nodded at Blondie.

I just wanted to come to the nail shop, get my stuff waxed, get my nails done, and try to forget that 15 years ago when May got here, the 1992 LA Riots had just gone down. But no, Blondie was saying the kind of stuff that made me think she was on that Simi Valley jury that acquitted the officers that struck Rodney King 56 times.

Blondie wasn't finished with her questions. She moved on to the woman working on her hands. "So what's your name?"

This woman told her, "My name is May."

Blondie must have never met two Brittanys or two Stephanies that work in the same place because she said, "Oh, are you all named May?"

The Lord saved me from hearing more because the girl that does my waxing came to tell me she was ready for me. I'd rather have hair ripped off my body than have to hear Blondie continue to question the ladies working on her hands and feet.

Now, Blondie isn't hitting anybody with a baton 56 times. She's not on the radio calling black women offensive things. She didn't say the n-word in a comedy club. She's just trying to make small-talk with the ladies at the nail shop while she's supporting their business, right? So what's the big deal? She's just some close-minded woman talking too loudly, right?

Well, I'm sure Blondie thinks she's not racist.

Every day, I drive through the areas of this city that were decimated by the LA Riots. They started fifteen years ago yesterday. Today when I drive around this city, I'll be driving through a part of town that was on fire fifteen years ago. Even though now there's a Starbucks on the corner of Slauson and Western, there's still not a Barnes and Noble or a Borders in all of South-Central LA. High school graduation rates are like apartheid South Africa's. Unemployment is still high. But we're shocked when folks snap and decide to burn some stuff up.

In America we all want to sit around and say, "I'm not racist." It's always someone else thinking and saying and doing the things that hurt and cause so much pain. We don't think the stuff that happens on a daily basis in our own individual interactions is a big deal. We don't think the policies that are in place have anything to do with racism. We tell ourselves that these days most of the racism that happens is some huge thing like Rodney King getting beaten or Don Imus saying what he did. As long as we can squash the egregious acts of racism with public apologies to Al Sharpton, and as long as Oprah's still a billionaire, then we act like it's business as usual.

As long as the poor people of color stay down in South-Central, than it's all good. As long as May doesn't say anything to Blondie, it's all good.

As long as nobody riots, it's all good.