h2>Dating : Dating in the Time of Portland
How to torpedo a fine conversation, and what I learned from 2020 so far
There were lots of reasons to think that this date and I might get along. We were both ex-military, pilots, we entered the service about the same time. We both love dogs, both have climbed Kilimanjaro and the Everest Base Camp.
We’re both active. Lots of stuff there.
Until we agreed not to discuss politics, which would have been fine until he made this comment…
“all those rioters in Portland just show up and loot and then go back to their homes and party at night.”
I am quite sure that Skeezix has no clue how ignorant, how racist, and how utterly mindless this comment is.
I not only don’t care, I have no interest in finding out.
Dating is hard enough past sixty as it is. What makes it far more messy is the political climate, which, like the Civil War (which was most uncivil for its time), has created deep rifts in families, cost friends and communities their ability to connect as Americans.
The issues of #MeToo, #BLM and Covid-19 have further forced us apart, making it damned near impossible to find safe ground, to say nothing at all of finding someone to whom we’re the least bit attracted.
I have twice this year canned a hopeful dating process because of their comments about the activism in Portland.
The tone-deaf, deeply racist and horrific misreads of those actions lead me to understand, rightly or wrongly, that said over-sixty men choose to be brain dead, choose to be racist, and in every possible way choose not to put the slightest bit of effort into understanding what is really going on rather than the (Fake) Fox News version of it.
Besides, honey, if Fox News is your source, we can’t talk.
I’m quite sure these men feel precisely the same way about me, when half of what I am worth is already dedicated to National Public Radio. The moment I say that I heard it on NPR, eyes roll.
Many of my fellow Black Medium writers have pointed out with unfortunate accuracy that Americans have, in their short-attention-span way, moved on beyond George Floyd. That’s just so last spring. Well, the question I have thrown down and continue to ask is
What has changed inside you, if anything, as a result of those events?
Are you thinking, writing, seeing differently as a result? Or do you continue, as most do, to motor on along, blissfully ignorant, dangerously uninformed, and utterly resistant to anything that might make you wiser, smarter, better-informed, more compassionate, empathetic and inclusive?
Are you meaner, more intolerant and vicious to others about their perceived racism because you are now painfully aware of your own?
What I keep seeing is that the datable (sort of) available men who are within shouting distance of what I hope to find fall into the intolerant category.
All the smart, competent readings I have done of superbly-talented Black writers, most for me anyway women have shifted me. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes they totally validated a lifetime of observations. All too often the White men over sixty that I have met shoved them all under the Angry Black Chick trope, disregarding their truth, their brilliance and what they really have to offer: insight, answers, and recommendations.
For while I would likely have canned these guys for other reasons, the flashpoint nature of the uprisings around race, the ways these issues peel the skin layers back on our value sets or lack thereof, are critical to our understanding of whether or not one single thing has changed in us as a result of 2020.
The simple truth is that for most, if not many, of the major issues of 2020 did little to redirect most of us. If anything, they probably caused us to double down even harder on those things we already believed.
As a Florida native, this is akin to those folks who flat out refuse to leave — and these are those who have the means to do so- in the face of an oncoming Category Five Hurricane.
People are far more invested in standing with the people/community with whom they publicly threw in their hat, rather than change hats. It seems that most of us would prefer to take the real and imaginary baseball bat to anything but anything which seeks to upset the rotten apple cart on which we collectively sit. What we identify with (Trump, the Confederate Flag, Nazi symbolism ), identifies US. Dump Trump, then WE get dumped.
In the same way that domestic abuse spikes when the home team loses. Dude, you are not the team. Their loss to the Big Rival is not a statement about your ineptitude. Your brutality against your partner when said team bonks IS a statement about your ineptitude.
Change takes humility, courage and intellectual sobriety.
Not what we Americans are good at these days.
Real change is often preceded by pain of some kind. The pain of loss, of giving up what is familiar and predictable. In the highest sense, forfeiting some of those people, ideas and constructs with which we deeply identify. Those losses are very real, but they also make room for what’s possible. A New World does not rise if it is identical to the Old. America didn’t succeed- at least for a while and only for some-if those who created her didn’t have a different idea about a country.
Yet those same people, who were products of their time, perpetuated some of the worst ideas and practices of humanity. That is why constant change, self-assessment, stripping away of what doesn’t work are required of all of us.
These men who were otherwise attractive are apparently incapable of those things.
Which is why I remain single. For the lane that includes men over fifty who are in shape, who have lives, interests, work, passions, an income, a home of their own, that long litany of things that indicate some level of adulting is already incredibly narrow.
When you ask for genuinely woke, and woke enough to see their own racism, their own bullshit (and I carry my fair share, but I am aware of it and unafraid to own it), sharply narrows what is already a very thin stream down to droplets.
At best.
Every single White person is in some way party to and part of the problem of race in America, the world. Each of us has a piece of it. To the extent that you and I really, truly listened this year, to the extent that we allowed the events to soak into a porous mind, willing to be hurt and pained and sculpted by others’ pain, those things likely did change us.
This is what 2020’s events did for me:
- For my part, it re-energized an existing commitment to an even higher level.
- I changed how and what I wrote to be more inclusive, to point out inequities, and to link to more Black writers.
- I have been far more active in engaging in the discussion, highlighting smart writers, and reading their words to continue to expand my understanding.
- I have actively supported other writers, befriended more folks and in one case, we’re working on a business relationship.
My stats have dropped precipitously. Whether that’s from this or because Medium won’t stop dicking around with their algorithm, I have no clue. But I will tell you that my choice has cost me. Damned right it has.
However, here’s the rub. If you and I insist on being friends with the Token Black Person and we continue to clap for or like racist jokes on Facebook, and if we insist on not calling out friends and family or potential dates on their shit, then we are spineless. We are too afraid to stand with a value set because we may lose approval.
I can’t speak for you. But if someone’s approval of me stems from my standing with their racist beliefs and actions, watch how fast I can fucking run in the opposite direction, Sparky.
My buddy Rosennab wrote:
When we observe others’ perspectives, we are likely to challenge them, knock them down, or prove ourselves to be right too often. Our human capability of understanding the complexity of mental experience is ignored.
…Healing softens us back up. That’s what many people are afraid of in a culture addicted to pain. They stick to the belief that being hard protects them from harm. It doesn’t. Being conscious protects us from harm.
We can ask conscious questions without insulting others. We can reject offers without being offended by them. We can recognize that someone else may benefit from opportunities that don’t suit us. These interactions represent consciousness. You can decide if you want to defend yourself or transform yourself through consciousness.
The world demands this level of awareness from us. I cannot, will not surround myself with people who do not make this kind of empathetic choice, this kind of alignment with those who suffer from our hardness and inability to embrace their pain.
If that means I don’t have male company, that’s fine by me.
Finally, my favorite quote from Rosenna’s article:
In a culture addicted to pain, the way to look bigger is to make someone smaller. In a conscious mind, the way to ‘be’ bigger (not look bigger) is to allow your ego to become small. Become so small that insults thrown at you will miss. Gestures intended to hurt you will go over your head. Mean people will walk around you, not over you. It’s impossible to bend a piece of rice.
These men’s egos won’t allow them to feel, to see, to understand. Their boundaries are so far flung that if I step on a piece of paper in Podunk, they will be offended.
You can I can surround ourselves with brilliance. If you cannot see, embrace, respect and wholly enjoy Black Brilliance, Black Excellence, then you and I do not date, we don’t hang out, we don’t stand together.
This is indeed Love in the Time of Covid (with apologies to Gabriel García Márquez).
This year continues to be very difficult for everyone. However as with all difficult times, there are diamonds to be had. You don’t find them without the work. The real work is personal growth. The ability to “see with new eyes.”*
Or forever be emotionally blind.
*Marcel Proust.
