Suburban Boondocks

Today I bundled up and trudged to the grocery store to buy some juice in the beginnings of a snowstorm. Instead of just walking home, I wimped out and waited for the bus. Waiting with me were four black people.

Black people. Am I even allowed to say black people or do I have to say African American...?

They appeared to be in their late 20s or early 30s. There were three males and a female. I huddled in the bus shelter with them as they spoke loudly and cursed at each other. I couldn't really tell if they were mad at each other or just playing around. I'd seen this before; mostly among youth in urban settings. In fact, the last time I was in Northeast DC I watched a group of teenagers at a Chinese take-out restaurant play like this for a good thirty minutes.

The female and one of the males were swearing at each other -- n-word this and n-word that. They started pushing each other and wrestling in the bus shelter. Their friends laughed. The woman slammed the man into the side of the bus shelter and shattered the plastic encasing that held the bus schedules; they didn't seem to care. She then heaved him out onto the sidewalk where his pants fell to his ankles. She grabbed his tighty-whitey underwear and pulled them up to his chest so on-looking traffic could see his bare ass. She finally let him go and they continued to argue. Their friends didn't seem very concerned at all.

What?

Why is culture like this? To be fair, I feel like redneck culture might be the same way; it's self-perpetuating. Like, are you not embarrassed? Do you not view this as a negative incident? How did your friends not care? Should I not care? (You did notice that I was present, right?)

The thing is, it took me a minute to realize that this was happening in real life. I've been watching Boondocks a lot lately and it highlights (and accentuates) black culture just like that. What I saw today felt strange, distant, and out-of-place. It felt like television.

I need to get acquainted with other cultures; cultures that are right here.