Thursday, October 21, 2004
Race
One day I was riding the escalator at Lenox Square, when a young couple passed me on the escalator headed in the opposite direction. They were a very attractive couple. The guy was black, and appeared to be in his early twenties. The girl, with her long red hair and pale, freckled face, looked like a younger version of Julianne Moore. They were holding hands, minding their own business when I heard someone behind me shout/sing "Sheeee got jungle fever/ Heeee got jungle fever!"
I turned around to see a group of rowdy black teenagers who looked like they'd gotten all their fashion tips from Source magazine and BET's Rap City, leaning over the rail, laughing at the couple. It seemed like the malls of Atlanta were jampacked full of stupid, loud-mouthed kids like these.You couldn't escape them. Empty-headed, thug wannabes who lived in the suburbs, but dressed and talked like their favorite artistically bankrupt, MTV-approved rappers.
Call me an uptight square, but I just didn't see what was so funny about harassing total strangers whose only crime was that they dared to (gasp!) date outside their race. Just how empty and pointless does your existence have to be for you to get off on publically insulting absolute strangers over something so trivial?
If you're going to humiliate someone, at least let it be for a good reason, like their religion or economic background.
Now that I think about it, that was an awful lot of work for such a bad, bad joke. Now I know what it feels like to be a writer for the WB's "Reba."
I turned around to see a group of rowdy black teenagers who looked like they'd gotten all their fashion tips from Source magazine and BET's Rap City, leaning over the rail, laughing at the couple. It seemed like the malls of Atlanta were jampacked full of stupid, loud-mouthed kids like these.You couldn't escape them. Empty-headed, thug wannabes who lived in the suburbs, but dressed and talked like their favorite artistically bankrupt, MTV-approved rappers.
Call me an uptight square, but I just didn't see what was so funny about harassing total strangers whose only crime was that they dared to (gasp!) date outside their race. Just how empty and pointless does your existence have to be for you to get off on publically insulting absolute strangers over something so trivial?
If you're going to humiliate someone, at least let it be for a good reason, like their religion or economic background.
Now that I think about it, that was an awful lot of work for such a bad, bad joke. Now I know what it feels like to be a writer for the WB's "Reba."
