very minor note on "lady"

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 12:48 PM, George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> well-meaning

Quite so. Another illustration of well-meaningness:

A white, Robert-Mitchum-looking fellow-GI from Odessa, TX:
"Say, Gray! You ever been to Frau Wolter's?" (A GI-bar catering to
black GI's, in Heilbronn, Germany.

Your humble correspondent:
"No, I haven't."

AWGIFOT:
"Why not? That's where all the other *black boys* go."

Did he mean well? Absolutely. Why do I think that? Because he kept in
touch with me after our release from active duty, calling me from
Austin on his own dime, even coming out to Los Angeles to visit me and
introducing his wife to me. (We dumped her and I took him to the Los
Angeles Playboy Club for an evening of riotous good times.)

OTOH, was his casual, well-meaning reference to _Negro_ *men* as
"_black_ *boys*" felt as a fucking *stunning* insult coming out of
nowhere? One that I recall with anger to this day, even though the
incident occurred in 1961, a half-century ago?

As was commonly said by GI's at that time:

"Fuckin-A!"

What does _well-meaning_ have to do with the reality of a situation? I
had no more ability to react negatively to Waldrup's question in 1961,
any more than that colored lady had to react negatively to being
addressed as "auntie" in 1894. The white man was trying to nice to
her, when he had not the least obligation to do so. What would it have
done to improve the situation, if she had decided to to break nasty
with him over a perceived insult, when, from his point of view, his
only purpose was to be of use to her, not to insult her? Instead of a
nice letter to the editor describing how two white men had
condescended to help an elderly, Aunt-Jemima-ish colored woman, there
might have been an angry letter about some old, black fishwife who
hadn't appreciated good treatment.

In my case, Waldrup was merely trying to initiate a friendly
conversation about a common military concern - getting drunk - and was
probably congratulating himself for not slipping up and saying
"_nigger_ boys." If I'd revealed my true feelings, he would very
likely have been greatly embarrassed. Great embarrassment usually
leads to great anger. And that would have been a problem not only for
me (our unit was comprised of some 400 head of EM, among whom there
were only two Negroes), but also, in my status as the de-facto
representative of every Negro in the United States, a problem for all
of the Negro race.




--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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