Damon Young - Fighting Words

 

So, before I begin, like, I have to say that between the setting, the ambiance and the audience, this feels like a deleted scene from Get Out. [audience laughter] Like, I don't know if I'm up here to tell a story or get auctioned off. All right, so I'm from Pittsburg. Pittsburgh, PA. Born and raised and I still live there now. For people who haven't been there, it's a city that is so spiritually, culturally, politically, atmospherically white that Rick James once tried to snort it. [audience laughter] It's a city that gets these national odds for being the most livable city, and the next Brooklyn or the new Seattle or the 21st century's Austin. But what it really is is Wakanda for white people. [audience laughter] Again, that provides necessary context for a very quick story about my parents, who love to tell stories.

 

Okay. So, it's 1985. I'm six years old. I'm actually being babysat by my sister. And my mom and my grandmother, who I called Nana, they were post–Sunday brunch browsing at this deli in Pittsburgh in this neighborhood called Squirrel Hill. So, there's some altercation or disagreement with the cashier, who was a white boy who was maybe about 18, 19 years old. And it ends with him calling my mom and my Nana, “Black nigger bitches.” Furious, my mom and my Nana leave the store, go up the street to the supermarket, Giant Eagle, to get my dad. My dad is doing what dads do, you know, in produce, probably tasting steak or doing what dads do in supermarkets, and get him. So, they all go back to the store. 

 

My dad very calmly approaches the cashier, "My wife and my mother-in-law said that you insulted them, and I would like for you to apologize to them." Cashier refuses. So, then my dad says, "Okay. Well, I'm going to count to 10. And by the time I reach 10, if you don't apologize, I'm going to come behind that counter and kick your ass with this baseball bat." I forgot to mention that that my dad had a baseball bat with him, [audience laughter] because my dad is apparently Black beatnik John Wick. And so, my dad counts, literally starts counting. Cashier doesn't apologize. My dad swings the bat at him. Cashier picks up a knife, swings it at my dad. So, they're knife fighting and bat fighting, and this is happening over the register.

 

In the meantime, my mom and my Nana-- Again, my mom, big fan of Pat Metheny, Steely Dan, Tina Turner. She was a bank teller at this time. My grandmother, my Nana, wasn't just white gloves on Sunday. She was white gloves like at Burger King on Wednesday. [audience laughter] Like, white gloves, I don’t know, to wash her head like. This was who she was. Again, they're in the store throwing jars of M&Ms, and bigoted pickles, and racist Reese's Cups and just making this huge mess in the store. 

 

After about four or five minutes, it spills out into the sidewalk, and the police come, and my parents and my Nana are arrested. And then, they're taken to the police station or whatever, and they're approached by some Black woman with some authority, a sergeant or lieutenant or something like that, who takes one look at them and is like, "Okay, you brunch-attending, Bonneville-driving Black people are not supposed to be here. Tell me what happened." So, they say what happens. And the sergeant says, "Okay. Well, you're free to go." "What?" "You were racially harassed. You're free to go." "So, what about the store?" "Damn, if you Black people and get the fuck out of here before these white people figure out I'm letting you go." 

 

So, again, my parents love to tell stories. They repeat this story at barbecues, at funerals, carpool, taking me to AAU basketball games, while sitting in the living room during commercial breaks. While this happened, I realized that being called a nigger was like this terrible, awful thing. But a part of me wanted to be called one by a white person, just so I could fight them and beat them up and then have a cool story like my parents had? [audience chuckle] 

 

Even my sister, who's nine years older than me, had this cool, I'll call it a fight story about a time when she was in high school choir practice, and this white girl in the band called her nigger, and then my sister kicked her ass and then got suspended from school. She was terrified, that once my parents found out she got suspended she would get in trouble. But once my parents found out why she got suspended, she didn't get grounded. She got butter pecan ice cream. [audience laughter] I wanted my own post–fight story, ice cream party with polaroids, clowns, a piñata, the whole shebang. But I didn't get it. 

 

So, I moved through adolescence. 9 years old, 10 years old, 11 years old, 12 years old. Still doesn't happen. I'm a teenager now. 13, 14, 15, 16. Still doesn't happen. And this induced this really deep anxiety, and self-consciousness and even like a neurosis in me where I started to doubt my own environment. Like, why hadn't I been called this before in a city that is so white? Am I not Black enough for a white person to call me that word? Like, what the fuck is wrong with me? 

 

When white people are called on for racism and then they say, "Well, you know, I had the one Black friend, you know, Bob, who I carpool with and I fight over to watch NBA games?" Was I Bob? Was I like that one Black? Was I like that, you know, that one Black friend, like basically the character Rashida Jones plays in every movie? [audience laughter] Was that me? [audience laughter] Again, I realized how absurd it was to have this anxiety, to have this neurosis about something that is so violent. But it was my reality. And then, when I'm 17, it finally happens. 

 

I'm waiting for a bus. It's nighttime, like 7 o'clock. It's September, so it's dark. I'm waiting for a bus by myself. I was going to go downtown to go play basketball for the rest of the night. As I'm waiting there, this Ford F-150 comes speeding past, and a person driving the car leans out the passenger side window, screams, “Nigger.” Keeps speeding away. And so, when it happens, I even do a double take. Like, I guess he's talking to me. I'm the only person standing here. I guess the surreal nature of the whole experience, is that he looked exactly like Ricky Schroder. If you remember him from Silver Spoons and NYPD Blue. [audience chuckle] I am not convinced it wasn't Ricky Schroder, [audience laughter] even twenty-five years later. Ricky Schroder, if you're out there listening, I remember what you did that fall, I'm waiting for you. [audience laughter] 

 

And so, this thing that I’ve been building up, this experience I’ve been wanting to have, is finally here. This guy's in a car and he’s speeding away. I was tempted to scream at him to come back, because this is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is like the Black bar mitzvah. [audience laughter] This is him calling me this. I get a chance to fight him. I finally have a story when it’s time to share the story. But he’s passed two lights, two intersections. He’s gone. So, it’s not going to happen. 

 

And then, something happened to me. It felt like something broke inside of me but not something bad. I started laughing. And not even a chuckle or a nervous laugh, but like, “Oh my God,” like, tears, snot, the ugly face. Like the Steve Bannon face of laughs. [audience laughter] That’s how ugly this laugh was. I just realized in that moment how ridiculous it had been for me to want this to happen, to want this terrible, awful thing to happen and to assign any level of my racial identity or my Blackness to how white people treated me. And that’s the last time I did it. Thank you.