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AFROS, BEARDS, BIRACIAL MARRIAGE, AND THE LAW I have a friend with impressive hair. I met him in Texas. My friend was white but his hair definitely wasn't. It was far too curly for that. Sometimes we'd play racquetball at the school gym. When we were done his hair would be enormous. Sure, it looked good most of the time, but this was insane. The hair exploded in every direction, as if it were trying to escape from his head. We'd walk back to our dorm. I'd look at my friend—white guy, baggy shorts, a towel around his shoulder, gigantic afro—and see black girls checking him out. The last time I shaved was in China, three months ago. I haven't shaved since then. My Chinese fiancée hates my beard, which by the way is disheveled and awesome. I haven't groomed it. I haven't trimmed it. Sometimes there's food in it. Very recently I met a Zambian man. His English was perfect, so I asked him where his parents were from. Zambia, he said. We spoke for several minutes. I impressed him. "I like you, Murray James. You speak in a measured and very liberal way." Later that night I ran into an old friend. He saw things differently: "You try to come off artsy, but you're such a fucking conservative. I love it!" If you're a man and you're clean-cut, then you've been to parties and noticed the guy with the biggest beard. You know, that guy. He's the guy who oozes social indifference. He's the guy whose beard announces, casually, that it just doesn't care. He's the guy with the beard you're tempted to have, and might consider growing if only your girlfriend, your wife or your white-collar boss would allow it. He's the guy you notice at a party and say, "Hey man. Great beard." Last night my brother was in town. We decide to go out for drinks. We find a classy joint downtown. The place has a dress code and on a Saturday night it is packed-to-the-rafters busy. I check my coat and wade into a sea of beautiful people. On my left is a college freshman with a sweet blonde thing on his arm. He grabs me by the shoulder. "Dude," he says. "That's an awesome beard." It was the first of five compliments I'd receive that night. I smile. I've become that guy. Peter Hitchens says that political correctness is a form of cultural Marxism. I wonder if that's true. I always thought political correctness was a mild form of neurosis—an irrational fear of saying what everyone instinctively knows to be true. Political correctness, I thought, was a condition of the mind that never quite fooled anyone. We can look to social science for the words to explain unfortunate demographic realities. Poor people are still poor, it turns out. Eventually we leave the bar and on the street we meet a police officer who isn't so much interested in my beard as he is in giving my brother a ticket for jaywalking. What happened is that the stoplight was red. There were no cars in sight, so my brother crossed the street. Instantly—like Batman—the police swooped down upon him. An officer rolled down his window and asked my brother if he knows why he was stopped. My brother knows. He confesses. My brother looks apologetic, too apologetic. I push my way up to the cop car window. But this isn't smart analysis; it's philosophically naïve. Words are not just words. They don't merely report. Words define. They prescribe and delimit. And to that extent they decide. Words do not hang from invisible skyhooks, up there somewhere. They live among us, down here, in this constantly changing world of inter-connected relations. Words, like everything else on this planet, are not part of a straight analogical line that leads back to us. No such line exists. Words are not up there; they're in the thick of it. They are as available to the turn of human industry as any wood, coal, or metal. Words are pocket watches, knives and wrenches. They are curvy, as we are. "Officer, are you writing my brother a ticket for jaywalking?" "Could I see some I.D. please?" "Here. Are you writing my brother a ticket for jaywalking?" "Have you been drinking tonight?" asks the police officer. "Absolutely." I explain to the policeman that jaywalking is not a crime. I am not belligerent. The police should stop writing tickets for jaywalking. There are fairer ways of collecting city revenue, I say. The officer tells me that a young girl was killed at this intersection by a drunk driver last year. How do I feel about that? Not good. But Officer, I say, drunk driving and jaywalking are not the same thing. People die in traffic accidents all the time, says the officer. It's my job to keep the people safe. The Zambian guy I mentioned earlier is engaged to a white girl. "That's great," I told him. "I'm a fan of biracial marriage." A fan of biracial marriage? I thought later. What an odd thing to be a fan of. I wondered if words like "biracial marriage" were euphemisms for plainer, more disruptive words, like "love." My mind took flight. What if "biracial marriage" had sinister connotations? What if "biracial marriage" was not love at all, but a form of romantic imperialism? What if a John Smith-Pocahontas dynamic could be mapped onto "biracial relationships" willy-nilly, such that couples who supposed themselves to be broad-minded and wholesome might be accused of such crimes as cultural tyranny, violence, and oppression? "Oh no! What a terrible thought!" I worried. Perhaps political correctness is an affliction of the mind, after all. My brother is staring at all this in disbelief. He steps in and apologizes. "Don't listen to my brother," he says, "He's a moron. He's lived in New York for four years and he doesn't know what he's talking about." My brother looks sincere. He tells the police officer to have mercy on him because he's a student. He tells the police officer that our great grandfather was in law enforcement. "Is that true?" asks the police officer. "Yes, definitely." The officer is mollified. "I should be writing you a $250 ticket for jaywalking," he says. "This one's for fifty-three dollars. Get home safe tonight, boys. And don't jaywalk anymore." Eventually my white friend—the guy with the gigantic afro—got married. He got married and moved to Chicago. To be honest I was always jealous of his hair. When it would explode from his head like that, all the girls would check him out. It was quite a sight. Very impressive. After Texas I stopped playing racquetball. I moved away and never did date a black girl. But my friend with the afro: neither did he. Not like it matters, but in an alternate universe, one where I had the enormous hair, not him, would things have turned out differently? Why am I even talking about this? Why? It's hard to spend time in the United States without noticing a manifestly uncomfortable racial situation. The situation makes honest commentary uncomfortable, and hard. People are quick to take offense. Many are afraid to comment on what's there. Others go to great lengths to comment on what's not there. Hardest of all is saying ones piece without being blind, bathetic, or squirrely. The cop pulls away. My brother looks at his jaywalking ticket. He motions me over. "Hey bro. Come look at this. The officer spelled my name wrong." "Fight it." -murrayjames 02/04/10 |