East Harlemites
This evening as I bought three forty-watt lightbulbs from the bodega on the corner of 117th and 3rd, the man behind the counter said to me "This neighborhood all full of white people -- I think is good idea."Oh, I murmured, and nodded sheepishly in response to what was obviously a sarcastic remark about gentrification. When I moved here three years ago, I scoffed at such ideas -- I, the gentry? Hardly! I lived in penury and what seemed a prodigous quantity of late-eighties Ghostbuster slime. But now I have health insurance! So, truly, what can I say?
The man behind the counter was unsatisfied with my self-deprecating response, so he clarified. Turns out he had not meant his remark sarcastically at all. He really meant "I think is good idea." He explained that the street was now much quieter.
When People harshes on black people, it's gratingly obvious. But I'm just not trained to parse racism from people of ambiguous Middle Eastern descent towards Hispanics. It's just not clear, for instance, what stereotypes Jordanians might hold against Mexicans. It's like being a drug dog suddenly told to sniff for pirated software.
And besides, he needs white people to come buy his lightbulbs? It's not like he's selling paninis or smoked Gouda over there. It's a store consisting entirely of plantain chips, cigarettes, and forty-watt lightbulbs.
Update: The bodega at 116 and 2nd is selling SOY AND RICE MILK. It is the end of El Barrio as we know it.
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posted by JenIsFamous at 5/17/2006 11:17:00 PM
8 Comments:
PARENTAL ADIVISORY (EXPLICIT LYRICS): racial epithets, dripping sarcasm
Yeah. Remember the good ol’ days when tribal fractions were caused mostly by the simmering animosities that had existed for centuries between warring Europeans, before spilling over the brim of the boiling melting pot and flooding the streets of the enclaves their kinsmen had formed next to each other in the New World? You can summarize the entire canon of worthwhile Western thought in under two minutes—and have!—but European history isn’t a story requiring the prolix Matt Penn to write its epilogue, either. Is it?
Scottish warlord William Wallace was the original Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as far as the British are concerned; Irishman Michael Collins Yasser Arafat, before he became Mahmoud Abbas. Spain, a formerly relevant player in geo-politics now relegated to the status of tourist destination and occasional Olympic host country, had an empire prior to its fin de siecle spat with Tio Samuel over some islands in another hemisphere, but then went down for a siesta from which it never awoke. King Leopold raped the Congo, King Victor Emanuel reunited Italy. King Oscar tinned sardines; the Kaiser had a roll on which to put them. And speaking of the Aryans, every thirty years or so, those wacky Germans would find themselves in a dust-up, or someone would invade France or Russia; while Poland would play Where is Waldo? with the world map. And, oh yeah, everyone hated the Jews. Simple, right?
In the good ol’ days, you could count on it really being about something meaningful, like whether that razorback hog’s rightful owner was Floyd Hatfield or Randall McCoy; not something stupid like whether the Korean greengrocer refused to say good morning or thank you, or otherwise “dissed” a Rastafarian by slamming his change down on the counter rather than putting it in his hand.
Plantain chips, cigarettes, and a forty - that's all I want.
You can keep the watts and the bulb. But if you got bud lemme know.
Let your confusion be banished from this realm.
Immigrants usually take on the existing prejudices of the "majority" group, so you can be pretty sure Jordanians will see Mexicans, etc. as "white" people do.
So many big words and punctuation...
I'm going back to gawker before I get a headache.
Stop buying 40-watt regular bulbs, that is so 20th century. Get the CFL bulbs (compace flourescent light) - they last so much longer, use less energy so your bills go down and the earth suffers less. Everybody's doin' it!
Do you really think you can buy CFL bulbs in an East Harlem bodega? You're lucky to find wheat bread, skim milk, or a muffin that is any flavor but "corn."
It never ceases to amaze me how a total stranger can just assume that you're racist as he is. They always give you that look like, "Hey, were bustin' outta here tonight. You come with us..."
Total Strangers!
If you'd bought compact fluorescent bulbs the last time you'd ventured out of your neighborhood, they would not have burned out and you wouldn't be needing to replace them.
Of course then you wouldn't have a topic to blog about.
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