Since I had a little extra money and a free coupon, I went to a local restaurant for breakfast this morning. There weren’t too many people in the dining area.

About 10 minutes into breakfast, the lone African-American in the dining room left. Not more than two minutes later, two middle-aged white guys started a conversation that I could mostly hear from 10 feet away. From the jargon and whatnot, I gathered they were in sales. One was dominating the conversation and spouting the usual claptrap about how businesses are overtaxed and overregulated. He even pointed out Wall Street as an example.

To quote Homer Simpson, “urge to kill…rising.” But, hey, he’s just some white sales douchebag. No shortage of those on this planet, and this guy is just blather. But then, after he’s secure that the lone black customer is no longer in the restaurant, comes this:

“I hate to say this, but I didn’t used to be racist – Obama made me one.”

I finished up and left. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as this slackjaw. Had I the guts, I would have said “No, you hate to say it when you think someone might disagree with you. You’ve always been a racist – you just didn’t have the guts to admit it until you could blame it on a black guy.”

As I was leaving, I overheard him say that the President was proof that blacks and whites shouldn’t marry.

It’s a good thing my mother raised me better than that, because it took every ounce of self-control to keep from going back and reading him the Riot Act.

This quote seems appropriate: “I’m not black, but there are times I wish I wasn’t white.” – Frank Zappa.

This also did little to disabuse me of the notion that middle-aged white guys are the most annoying and self-pitying so-and-sos on the planet (and I say that as someone who has every intention of being a middle-aged white guy soon).

WF