everywhere is war

So last night, DD and I went to the fair in town. Just like the fairs set up in parking lots of all the other small cities in the country, it was a sea of asphalt filled with a few rides operated by the drug addicts and the mentally ill and hoardes of rigged games where you trade two dollars for a very slim chance to win a stuffed animal you could probably buy for three bucks. DD spent nearly 20 bucks trying to shoot basketballs into no-regulation rings, but I managed to resist the urge until right before we left, when I dropped two bucks on the game that involves throwing softball-sized balls into a what resembles a laundry basket, tilted at an angle.

When I was a kid, I won that at a carnival somewhere, but the carnie told me I had cheated, because I leaned in, and he didn't give me my four foot stuffed creature. So I figured I'd try it again. Three shots for two dollars. DD suggested the first one be a practice shot, and the carnie said "sure, first one's a practice shot, unless you make it, then I'll count it. just because you're white" I wasn't sure I had heard him right, and I really didn't want to believe that I had. I made the first shot, and even figured out the trick. Anyone can make the first shot because they leave the balls in the basket to dampen it, but they clear them out afterwards, to make the second two shots almost impossible. This way they get your confidence up, so you come back to try again and again. Anyway, as I took my second two shots, the guy sort of strck up a conversation with us, asking us where we were from, and so on, and as we left, he offered us a couple of small stuffed snakes, saying very clearing this time "just because you're white." I mumbled something, no, that's alright, no thanks, but he thrust them into our hands and i just turned a walked away, too stunned to really know what to say. We were leaving anyway, and gave the snakes to a seven or eight year old kid with big eyes, who smiled at the prospect of claiming them as his own prizes for winning a game.

The fair was really the first place where I saw blacks and whites socializing together in large numbers. My school has 4 white kids. DD and I stopped in at the bar on the way home, and it was all-white. When I've been to the bourbon mall, another restaurant / bar (try the fried pickles), it's also been all-white. Wal-mart and kroger were really the only places I had seen large numbers of white and black people together, and those, by nature, are not places that foster social interactions. Unfortunately, what I heard from that carnie last night was not the only sign of the latent racism that is still so strong here - DD heard a young white couple make the comment "these niggers are so fucked up." This world is so fucked up, when there are people thinking things like that.

The group of guys I play pickup soccer with is surprisingly mixed. There are whites, from the private school, blacks from the public school, whites and a few blacks from the catholic school (both alums and current students from all three). There are mexicans from the mexican restaurant, and there are a few guys from baghdad, doing who knows what here. Yet still, race is the defining characteristic, and generalizations based on race are still a little shocking to me "the damn mexicans just kick you too much" or even things like "where are all the mexicans today?. Usually, we play mexico vs usa, which is a convenient way to break up the teams. Sometimes the arabic guys go with the mexicans, sometimes with us, to even out the numbers. Most of the guys out there are really nice guys, and I wouldn't say they are racist. Yet race just looms larger on the radar here.

"until the color of a man's skin, is no more significant, than the color of his eyes

there's a war"