This was unbelieveably fun to draw. All those little scales and pearls just popped up and happened all by dey bad selves — and that’s what I get for watching season 1 of The Wire again. The western Washington state hick accent is flat and featureless; anybody gets near us with accents more spicey or interesting than ours, and we suck it right in, leading to not-so-uncommon “How white am I?” moments.
Of course, speaking of accents and cops, who else thinks that an old black man with a cane might be reacting in fear and anger when a cop walked into his house without knocking? How would you react?
Of course, the cop would have to come in without knocking if he thought it was a burglary — but there is no way in hell he better not start apologizing, explaining and getting his butt out of a private citizen’s property the moment after he has nicely asked for ID card, seen it, and knows there are better things he could be doing.
As Americans, our constitution gives us a right to run our mouths and say any stupid thing we want to anybody (Anybody would disagree with that?) and not be arrested for it. The proper response if we’re citizens is to mouth back — never to escalate to violence. The proper response from any public servant — and that includes cops — is to say “Have a good evening, sir,” and leave.
It’s awfully nice of the old black man to agree to have a beer with a cop and another public servant. After all, they’re not part of our social circle.
And on the other hand, some black people have a negative reaction to my rural Kentucky accent. Yes, I grew up with parents who used the “N” word, and segregated schools through 6th grade. Whitney Young Jr and I had our awareness of Jim Crow raised at exactly the same place– the Shelby Theater. What it meant to two kids was that neither one of us could sit where we wanted when we went there. My generation is the one that had to outgrow that stuff. It helped that I considered it morally wrong from the git-go. My parents absolutely would not send me to a Southern school in the sixties for that reason.
My brother once used the N word. My mother washed his mouth out with Lava soap while the rest of us stood around big-eyed. My father once said “dirty Indian” OUT of hearing of my mother. When I was mad at him, I yelled, “I’m gonna go live with the Indians!” Which I did. Your experience sounds like the “How to Make an Atheist” process: raise them in church.