Old, Grumpy, And Black: How To Talk (And Not Talk) To Black, Female Baby Boomers
One reason I know for sure that we don’t treat everyone the same as I have been telling “colorblind” racism deniers for years now is because of the way I’ve been treated based on the way I looked. During the late nineties when I was in my late forties, I lost eighty pounds in one year, shrinking back down to my high school weight. A skinny teenager just looks young, and if she’s tall, like a model (I looked like Chocolate Twiggy with black, thicker, kinkier June Allyson hair) while a skinny, middle-aged woman looks old and pitiful. During the relatively brief period when I was at least forty pounds below my ideal weight (instead of being forty pounds above it), I was treated like a delicate flower. People looked at and addressed me not only with compassion and concern, which I appreciated, but also with pity and condescension, which I loathed. When I had regained fifty to sixty of those lost pounds and reached my early fifties, I started being treated with more respect. Younger people would hold the door for me at the post office and occasionally call me “mam.” I LOVED IT! After surviving a debilitating case of acid reflux and (the not unrelated) forty years in white institutions, I deserved respect. BOW DOWN, YOUNG FOLKS, AND CALL ME DOCTOR SISNEY! If we keep surviving, however, we finally will be old and look old enough to enter Target during the Covid senior hours without being asked to show our driver’s licenses. When one sweet young man asked me if I was sixty-five as I was entering Target, I thanked him and told him I was seventy-one and about to turn seventy-two. Unfortunately, along with Medicare, Social Security, senior discounts, and special senior shopping hours (Target dropped them in June) comes condescension when we grow old. This black, female baby boomer HATES CONDESCENSION!
During the past two weeks, two different debt pushing money makers (see 8/28/21 blog) got on my last nerve by calling me condescending names. The first one, a real estate salesman, called me “honey” after he had already irritated me with his racism denial while the second one called me “my love” and “mama” as he was wasting my time trying to scam me into buying some overpriced windows. When I jokingly posted on Facebook a warning to my nonblack Facebook friends (my family members and black friends know better) not to call an angry old black woman “honey,” several of my white former students were astonished that anyone would be foolish enough to call me “honey” even when I wasn’t angry. To be fair to the middle-aged white man who made such a stupid mistake, he was talking to me on the telephone when he became condescending. However, he had talked to me face-to-face earlier in the day. He’s the second white man (the first was my backstabbing lawyer) whose tone was very different when talking to me in my home than it was when we communicated on the telephone. The real estate salesman is clearly one of those racism deniers who hates any mention of racism, but he was able to hide that fact when we talked in person. On the telephone, either because he was frustrated that he wasn’t able to charm me into paying the illegal HOA assessments (I’m 99.9% certain he was working for Bungalows Board Treasurer Tim) to “save my home” or because he couldn’t see my face and forgot that I looked like someone he didn’t want to annoy (perhaps he and the lawyer just behave better when they are in someone else’s home, which I appreciate), he became one of my least favorite American types—a condescending white man. The contractor who was trying to sell the windows is a younger man who was born here but raised in Israel. He clearly is culturally illiterate, so I was more amused by him than annoyed. Even when I angrily told him not to call me “mama” because I wasn’t his mama, the poor fool called me “mama” one more time and then looked scared because I shot him one of my “YOU DO NOT WANT TO MESS WITH ME” looks. He was not only young but petite and thin. I didn’t really mind the condescending-to-me-but-maybe-not-to-grandmas-in-Israel “my love” term of endearment because I’m more tolerant of people from different cultures than I am of dominant culture Americans.
At this point in my long life, the only people who can get away with calling me “honey” are women over the age of eighty. When the women living in Pacifica, the assisted living/memory care facility where my mother has lived for five years, call me “honey” or “hon,” I like it. Some of them are older than my mother and probably have children my age. One cute Italian woman named Sylvia, who was (I’m fairly certain she has died since I no longer see her) over one hundred but looked no older than eighty, always called me “hon,” and I always smiled and talked to her. But when a black male resident who seemed to be between my mother’s age and mine (probably around eighty-five) started using too many terms of endearment when addressing us—“sweethearts,” “darlings”—I shot him a back off, old brother, look; he got the message.
I’m currently streaming a documentary about Sandy Bland (I’m still not watching MSNBC and CNN but am watching “The View” again now that Snowflake Meghan is gone). Her encounter with the Texas police officer shows how important what we say, how we say it, and to whom we say it are. If Sandy had been talking to a black, female Texas officer and used exactly the same words and tone, she would still be alive. If that white, male police officer had talked to a white woman or to a black woman with a different personality the same way he did to Sandy that woman would also still be alive because a white “Karen” wouldn’t be treated the way a black woman was, and most black women wouldn’t have snapped back at the police officer the way fiery, BLM activist Sandy did.
The two debt pushing money makers wouldn’t have convinced me to pay money if they had been less condescending, but they would have avoided triggering my black, female baby boomer rage. DEAR EVERYONE WHO IS NOT AN OLD WOMAN: I AM NOT YOUR “HONEY,” “LOVE,” OR “MAMA.” As the great Aretha Franklin, currently being played by almost as great Jennifer Hudson, used to sing: R-E-S-P-E-C-T!
During the past two weeks, two different debt pushing money makers (see 8/28/21 blog) got on my last nerve by calling me condescending names. The first one, a real estate salesman, called me “honey” after he had already irritated me with his racism denial while the second one called me “my love” and “mama” as he was wasting my time trying to scam me into buying some overpriced windows. When I jokingly posted on Facebook a warning to my nonblack Facebook friends (my family members and black friends know better) not to call an angry old black woman “honey,” several of my white former students were astonished that anyone would be foolish enough to call me “honey” even when I wasn’t angry. To be fair to the middle-aged white man who made such a stupid mistake, he was talking to me on the telephone when he became condescending. However, he had talked to me face-to-face earlier in the day. He’s the second white man (the first was my backstabbing lawyer) whose tone was very different when talking to me in my home than it was when we communicated on the telephone. The real estate salesman is clearly one of those racism deniers who hates any mention of racism, but he was able to hide that fact when we talked in person. On the telephone, either because he was frustrated that he wasn’t able to charm me into paying the illegal HOA assessments (I’m 99.9% certain he was working for Bungalows Board Treasurer Tim) to “save my home” or because he couldn’t see my face and forgot that I looked like someone he didn’t want to annoy (perhaps he and the lawyer just behave better when they are in someone else’s home, which I appreciate), he became one of my least favorite American types—a condescending white man. The contractor who was trying to sell the windows is a younger man who was born here but raised in Israel. He clearly is culturally illiterate, so I was more amused by him than annoyed. Even when I angrily told him not to call me “mama” because I wasn’t his mama, the poor fool called me “mama” one more time and then looked scared because I shot him one of my “YOU DO NOT WANT TO MESS WITH ME” looks. He was not only young but petite and thin. I didn’t really mind the condescending-to-me-but-maybe-not-to-grandmas-in-Israel “my love” term of endearment because I’m more tolerant of people from different cultures than I am of dominant culture Americans.
At this point in my long life, the only people who can get away with calling me “honey” are women over the age of eighty. When the women living in Pacifica, the assisted living/memory care facility where my mother has lived for five years, call me “honey” or “hon,” I like it. Some of them are older than my mother and probably have children my age. One cute Italian woman named Sylvia, who was (I’m fairly certain she has died since I no longer see her) over one hundred but looked no older than eighty, always called me “hon,” and I always smiled and talked to her. But when a black male resident who seemed to be between my mother’s age and mine (probably around eighty-five) started using too many terms of endearment when addressing us—“sweethearts,” “darlings”—I shot him a back off, old brother, look; he got the message.
I’m currently streaming a documentary about Sandy Bland (I’m still not watching MSNBC and CNN but am watching “The View” again now that Snowflake Meghan is gone). Her encounter with the Texas police officer shows how important what we say, how we say it, and to whom we say it are. If Sandy had been talking to a black, female Texas officer and used exactly the same words and tone, she would still be alive. If that white, male police officer had talked to a white woman or to a black woman with a different personality the same way he did to Sandy that woman would also still be alive because a white “Karen” wouldn’t be treated the way a black woman was, and most black women wouldn’t have snapped back at the police officer the way fiery, BLM activist Sandy did.
The two debt pushing money makers wouldn’t have convinced me to pay money if they had been less condescending, but they would have avoided triggering my black, female baby boomer rage. DEAR EVERYONE WHO IS NOT AN OLD WOMAN: I AM NOT YOUR “HONEY,” “LOVE,” OR “MAMA.” As the great Aretha Franklin, currently being played by almost as great Jennifer Hudson, used to sing: R-E-S-P-E-C-T!
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I’m more formidable now that I’m older, Linda. My mean look, husky voice, and authoritative teacher attitude, plus my mostly gray hair, should tell everyone that I’m not to be messed with, but some folks don’t believe that “cow horns will hook” or that old black women will slap, if not with their hands, then with their words.
Linda