Reply #96: When I was a teenager, I never understood why some people [View All]

[Patiod]

got upset when people used the phrase "some of my best friends are black" (or Jewish or whatever). It seemed really picky, or testy, of victim-y. Get over it! What's wrong with that? Some of my best friends WERE Jewish (or whatever).

Then, 3 of the girls from my sorority stayed over at the home of a 4th girl, M. The 3 of us were all Catholic, from middle-class or lower-middle-class families. The girl whose house we were visiting was from an old Main Line family, not much money anymore, but a lot of pedigree and lots of attitude: the country club, the Hunt, Pony Club, etc - Old Philadelphia money.

Her mother asked our last names (Irish, Polish, and Italian) and said "Oh, some of our best friends are Catholic!" and I swear to you, I heard a little "ding! ding! ding!" go off in my head. I got it. I got how patronizing it was. People could have talked to me about it for hours, but it took having it happen to me for me to really get it. They had lost a lot of their money, and were forced to send their daughter to a state university, and it was blindingly obvious that her mother was uncomfortable with M hanging out with such common girls (years later, when M married a Catholic, they boycotted the wedding, but that's another long story).

A few years later, I was saying how well-spoken some black politician was, and my black roommate explained (patiently) about the articulate/well-spoken thing. This time, I got it.

You might not get it, but if you want to get along with other people, and not have them look at you as just another clueless white person, you need to respect it. If you don't care, go ahead and continue to use "articulate" and "well-spoken" as compliments to your black co-workers and acquaintances, but don't expect them to be comfortable with you.