As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash. – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Updating the update. In 2023, the N-word is probably Nazi. Don’t get me started.
Jacksonville just got shot up again. The NAACP put out a advisory against travel to Florida.
Too late. I already live among them, deep in MAGAlandia. Used to be Tea Partyville. Of course, Iike everybody else around here, I blame B. Hussein Obama.
But my reason differs. If Barack hadn’t gotten to the top of America’s pyramid, none of this would’ve happened. I kept trying to tell everybody, yeah, but he’s half-white, too. But nobody listened.
How to start? How to start. When you are scary looking and broke, living in a vintage van with a big dog, not everybody is welcoming. 1992. Florida, a little south of Sarasota on the Gulf Coast.
Always like to shoot high myself. Begin at the beach and work your way inland if you have to.
This is a true story. It was sunny and bright.
In WILD DOG #2, I spelled out the N-word. That was over three decades agoago and I would spell it out again, maintain my giveashit outlaw artist persona.
But my white wife from the South says, no. She said it about five times. No, no, no, no, NO. This is my third wife and I listen to her.
I grew up in an entirely white town. No exaggeration. Except maybe the town part. More like a village. A hamlet actually.
Completely Wonder Bread. Which you couldn’t buy in town, ’cause we didn’t have a grocery.
Again. This is a true story.
And it hasn’t stopped.
That’s a fuckin’ shame.
Please let me remind you.
Cuidado.
Racism is a stupid diversion to keep the powerless exactly that way while the powerful enrich themselves.
On Nokomis Beach, I walk up to a fella dressed like the hired help.
I know better. He’s wearing distressed overalls and a similar expression.
“My dog and I are looking for a place to live,” I said. “Do you have a vacancy for us?”
He stops his digging and looks up at me. Slowly, he shades his eyes and glares into mine.
He turns and spits.
I notice he’s holding a shovel.
“The law says I gotta rent to N-word-plural.”
He spits again.
“Ain’t nobody sayin’ I gotta take dogs.”