uncomfortable conversation in coffee shops about blacks.
there’s something interesting about working at trendi.com, and it is the fact that we somehow always manage to get into conversations about things that people are traditionally “not supposed to talk about.” and i mean, that’d be fine and normal if it were just once in a while, but it seems that EVERY time we get into a conversation as a group, it is always about something “uncomfortable,” be it racism, politics, religion, etc.
so, it seemed only apt that on the return of summer’s month-long vacation to chile, that we would get into a loud and largely unfettered conversation about racism in the local cherry street cafe (which, by the way, has the best fucking feta sandwich ever… maybe a feta sandwich doesn’t SOUND great, but it is GLORIOUS).
also in conjunction with normalcy in the world of trendi.com was the fact that summer and i largely agreed whereas kristoph didn’t quite understand or agree with our sentiments. jenny was not here today, but i reckon she would have been holding the middle ground of opinions, as she often does.
so what was our discussion about today? summer had never been too much into united states’ politics. she largely does not vote because she considers them to all be puppets being waved around by the same hands. i can see that to a degree, but i still vote myself (this topic was the root of a former in-office debate as well). upon returning from chile, however, she became a little more interested in american politics simply because she had been away for so long and had no grasp of the political climate in chile. i guess it made politics of any sort seem important in some way? i’m not sure.
anyway, barack obama has been getting flamed for going to a church that has a mission statement somewhere along the lines of aiming to help the “black community.” we got in a discussion about that, and kristoph’s take was that, in order to counteract racism, we need to get rid of labels like “black” or “white” that further divide the groups into their own little niches. he also thought that, dammit, they’re a church. they should be helping everyone, not just the black community. i can absolutely see that argument, but summer and i’s take on it was that what the “black community” is fighting in the short run is not racism, but socioeconomic inequalities. it’s difficult to fight racism since it is engrained into minds and opinions, but it is easier to fight something more concrete, like inadequate schooling, broken families, gang problems, etc. we thought that since people obviously already live in a community surrounded by blacks, they are comfortable with the term “blacks” and identify with it, and therefore, it is a necessary evil in order to get them onto the next step. after all, the largest divider between people is wealth, not race. take care of wealth first, and then take care of race.
summer brought up an example that, had it not been for people who had identified themselves in these groups during the civil rights movement, less would have been accomplished in terms of bringing about “equality.” kristoph brought up that it was these self-labeled identifiers of black and white that brought about the problem in the first place. both arguments make sense. it is unfortunate that such an arbitrary label makes such a big difference.
summer grew up in california and i guess her mother had always brought her to churches or meetings where people spoke of empowering the “black community,” so it was normal to her, and it seemed weird to her that people would make such a huge deal out of it. kristoph, on the other hand, had grown up primarily in canada and europe, and those places don’t place as huge of an impact on race as the united states does, so the whole idea of people being so caught up over obama going to this church just seems to be out of his understanding and grasp.
anyway, it was all extremely interesting, but it also got extremely loud. i counted a couple looks from people… one from a guy who was on the phone near us, looking over because we were so loud i assume he had a hard time hearing the telephone… and another from this group of three people — two white-haired elderly people, and one younger, tattooed dude. we saw them, mid-hooting-and-hollering, looking at us, and decided we needed to go because we were probably “offending people.” this was two hours into our long, long lunch debate. when i looked up at the elderly couple, both the man and woman were smiling at me, in a nice but still strange way. i would have liked to loop them into the conversation. 
by the end of the conversation, none of us had changed our opinions on the matter at all, but we agreed that if obama’s speech (that he gave about the issue of him going to that church) was meant to spark debate and conversation about the topic of race, it had succeeded. i guess he wrote the speech himself, too, which was cool. unfortunately, i haven’t read it. i guess i should. but what’s cool is that the members of trendi.com are quite the melting pot. we have the general white bread girl from new jersey (lul), a half-black, half-white girl from compton, myself the asian from something something, and a polish-russian immigrant from canada who has lived all around the world. so i guess since we come from such different places, conversations are always interesting and sometimes enlightening.
other than when kristoph and jenny talk about the housing market and stocks. that bores the shit out of me. it’s like eating dinner at my house all over again.