A “reverse-racist” encounter in the park?

I just experienced (this morning) the same sort of aggressively ‘racist’ attitude that has swept the left-of-center progressives this past year…I think. Going over it all, after the fact, I am still befuddled and not fully wanting to believe that what happened was a deliberate expression of racism, but I’ll let you judge for yourself.

This morning, at about 11AM, per my usual routine, I hitched up the pup (a larger-than-average adult Siberian Husky female) and headed over to the local park for her mid-day ‘sniff and squirt’ patrol, along the shrubbery growing about its edges. We do this every single day at about the same time…the middle-most of her three major outings each day, rain or shine.

We encounter lots of things over there, most often discarded trash and food that people have casually chucked on the ground, despite the close proximity of designated waste-barrels (clearly, in probably more instances than we’re willing to admit, more as a ‘gesture’ of rebelliousness and purely anarchic disregard by younger people for proprieties than as a result of bad aim…a manifestation of the reactive ‘You ain’t MY boss’ attitude!’ that so many ‘kids’ seem to have, these days). But the trash is just one of the many unpleasant things that greet you when you try to walk your dog amidst all the beautiful trees there in the park.

There are also lots of piles of sh*t…not just dog effluent, but human excrement as well (these are occasionally, but not always, flagged by small bits of brown-besmeared toilet paper) and a fair number of discarded cheap plastic toys, water bottles and other flotsam and jetsam. In other words, a proverbial ‘walk in the park’ is not simply a walk through all that sylvan beauty, but more often akin to navigating a mine-field filled with unpleasant little ‘surprises’, no matter what path you elect to take.

The adjacent parking lot that serves the local branch library (Belle Cooledge Public Library) is also more often like a garbage dump than a car park, since a good number of people bring their McDonald/Burger King/what-have-you take-out-food to the car-park, sit in their cars and then simply toss the remnants (both containers and left-over food) on the asphalt, next to their vehicles. Add to this, the added effluent and debris left by people who park their RVs and motor-homes there overnight (or for several days) and do likewise—out the window.

In short, for anyone like me, raised with a strong sense of community responsibility for helping keep the neighborhood clean, these displays of absent collective responsibility and deliberately offensive behavior (what else can you call it when someone flings a small carton-load of trash directly next to an EMPTY waste barrel, without bothering to actually put the stuff INTO it?) are both extremely discouraging and sadly symptomatic of the prevailing, ‘devoluted’ spirit of our ‘diverse’ times.

In Sacramento, the city wifie and I live in, efforts to register complaints about this and requests for beefed-up public enforcement of park regulations typically fall on deaf ears. Our duly elected ‘City Council’ members could care less about such things, concerned more about acutely uncomfortable matters (such as public criticism and pressure to do something about the homelessness problem that doesn’t cost taxpayers billions of tax-dollars)…again largely a matter of lax statutory enforcement, since there are already dozens of existing laws proscribing the sort of extremely objectionable trashing of our city that leniently encourages police to let the homeless squat just about anywhere (and even take ‘dumps’ out in the open, wherever and whenever their bowels are inclined to move) their fancy takes them. E-mails to the City Council seem to disappear into some sort of electronic, bureaucratic ‘black hole’ and phone calls (via the ‘non-emergency’ 311 call line) also get swallowed up in an absolutely impossible-to-navigate automated ‘phone-tree’ recording system (that one suspects is intentionally intended to be evilly and deliberately frustrating).

Should one finally connect with an actual ‘Park Ranger’, despite all the complexities implicitly built into 311 centers, one learns that a response ‘may be forthcoming within an hour’. Oh joy! Prompt and speedy, eh? This City of Sacramento all works about as well as the wretchedly inept California State Governmental bureaucratic apparatus under the aegis of our photo-op perfect but gravelly voiced (Hollywood’s darling) Gov. Newsome (I call him Governor ‘Teflon Nuisance’).

I am, of course, often quite ticked off by this state of affairs in our otherwise beautiful park…and that doesn’t include having to cope with irresponsible dog owners who let their Pitbulls run off a lead in the park while you’re there trying to get little Fluffy back to the car unscathed! [There’s a ‘dog-park’ directly across the street from the ‘leashes-only’ park.]

At any rate, none of this is an exaggeration (or at least not much of one) and thus, even though this is one of the ‘better’ neighborhoods in Sacramento (the ‘Land Park District’, where one of our negligent City Councilmen also lives), each and every day’s ‘walk in the park’ brings with it new and equally unpleasant impediments that interfere with what would otherwise be a calming, cathartic and possibly even bucolic outing.

But today…TODAY…something new. But let me explain.

We had just gotten out of the car in the Library’s car-park and stepped over all the trash and sh*t that one routinely finds discarded there to reach the adjacent street sidewalk. I grabbed the girl’s lead and was taking a first few steps away from the car, when I noticed a young black woman running towards me on the sidewalk (obviously out for a ‘jog’ and suitably attired). In every such encounter with another person, I normally step away and head off at a 45-degree angle, so as to let whatever passer-by is there have full access to the sidewalk. Pup is more interested, naturally, in all the wonderfully odoriferous scents and outright stinks that the nearby grass offers.

This woman passed us and ran straight ahead on the sidewalk I had just graciously yielded to her and we headed off along the perimeter shrubs that we navigate every day, giving no further thought to this (other than my being mindful of having done the courteous thing in deferring right-of-way to a pedestrian). Besides, I don’t want the pup, on her 6-foot, non-retractable, reinforced lead, to trip anyone up…me included…since husky dogs are quite strong (despite, in her case, being also extremely friendly to everyone, including total strangers).

The rest of the walk went quite routinely, as we avoided several groups of people in the park…mostly in the kiddie playground. [I should point out that another compelling reason to stay well away from others is the current admonishment to ‘socially isolate’ from others during the latest sharp spike in January 2021 COVID-19 infections, but that’s only logical, isn’t it?].

And so we continued, until I happened to be on another peripheral sidewalk segment that runs along the opposite side of the park. The pup glanced behind us and so I reflexively turned and spotted this same young black woman running towards us, again. This time she was less than 10 feet away, so I promptly again veered sharply away at a 45-degree angle to put some distance between us (neither of us were wearing masks) and again patted myself on the head, virtually, for having done the ‘polite’ thing once more.

Try to imagine, then, my total disbelief when this young black woman abruptly deviated from the sidewalk and ran a flanking path quite near us, then cut abruptly in front of us, leaving less than a couple of feet between her and my dog, before immediately paralleling back to the sidewalk! Not a word was spoken by either of us and she did not so much as glance at me at all while she was executing this bizarre and totally illogical maneuver!

I, of course, was totally flummoxed by all this. What the FU*K was THAT all about?!

I simply continued to walk on my original vector after this had taken place, but my mind was working a mile a minute, trying to figure all THAT out!

Finally, after rejecting all the more complex possibilities, Occam style, it dawned on me that this young black woman was probably ‘shaming me’ for what she had interpreted as my ‘avoidance’ of her, back on the first sidewalk. What I had actually done, as intended, was yield to a pedestrian, simply as a courtesy, but she had obviously misinterpreted it as some sort of racist slight (or comment on her being a ‘black’) and seemed also obviously making a personal (racist) point (“What’s the matter?” Don’t want to be seen on the street with a black person, whitey?”!).

Now, no one is more balanced and reasoned than I, with regards to how I interact with others at all times, but to ‘not want to walk on the same side of the street as a black person?’ Whoooah, Nelly! Not this mother’s sainted Irish son!

Back here at the house, home from the park, I have played and replayed this encounter back dozens of times and despite my best efforts to dismiss it as ‘pure happenstance’ or ‘my OWN misinterpretation', I can reach no other conclusion that makes any sense other than that this young black woman was ‘teaching me a lesson’ of some sort, with her body language. After all, we never exchanged a single word, she didn’t look at the pup when she ran by us the second time (with the usual, “Aw. What a beautiful dog!” compliment that my girl routinely garners). She was just plain being ‘aggressively rude’ over a totally misinterpreted incident!

So I thought, anyway. This simply seemed to underscore what so many other social observers have observed as the BLM fanatics have continued to run amok in America, over these past 12 months! That far too many young blacks are ‘running around’ with big chips on their shoulders these days, deluded (or having been ‘coached’) into thinking that every single interaction between a white person and a black person has to be configured as having some sort of racist intent or motivation underlying it.

It occurs to me, also in giving all this a lot more thought, that these are the inevitable consequences of the near-rabid ‘political correctness’ mind-set that so many young left-of-center progressive ‘identity socialists’ have been brainwashed into believing to be the new ‘social gospel’ (I say that as a life-long atheist, and former ‘left-of-center’ sympathiser back in the 70s of my youth, lest there be any misunderstanding here).

Despite the hackneyed mantra of ‘Diversity is a blessing!’ that has such simple-minded popular currency these days, the sad truth seems to be that it is in fact this insanely twisted concept of ‘diversity’ that is presently tearing our nation apart, as the whole socio-political colloquial context of America continues to polarise to the point where any effort at all to bridge that increasingly yawning chasm ends in a total, futile leap into the empty void!

OK. That’s what happened to me today, Mr. generous-nature-by-birth and racially equanimeous-by-cultivation white guy! I would certainly be interested in hearing from anyone who has another take on this matter that hasn’t already occurred to me…really, since I am still flummoxed by the whole affair!

The paternal Irish side of me, of course, still burns a bit over today’s encounter, since the Irish have taken far too much undeserved sh*t over the past century as ‘unwanted, inferior’ immigrants to take insults of this sort lightly or innocently from other ‘self-perceived victims’. If they could only stop and realise that we’re all on the same side, if they’ll just cut out all the immature, selfishly puerile crap and acculturate themselves to the prevailing cultural paradigm in America!

I say that also as someone who is quite proud of my own ethnic heritage as an Irish/German Amerian and who feels absolutely no need to make empty or unwarranted apologies for the ‘sins of others’ that have been visited upon me, simply because I am a white person. That’s a total load of horse-exhaust and don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise! Anyone foolish enough to try to espouse all this misguided ‘racism’ (either by the radical right OR the radical left) that is ripping America apart on Irish soil would first be laughed off the street (and then probably be welcomed into the local pub for a Guinness Stout, for that matter, with a slap on the back).

To summarise, let me quote the inimitable Finns, of whom I have come to appreciate as no-nonsense, brave and stalwart Scandinavian defenders of common-sense in dealing with the vicissitudes of everyday life: “Ala puhu Pasca!” [English translation, and also the ‘fighter pilots’ creed’…or one of them, anyway: “DON’T TALK SH*T!”]

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POSTSCRIPT: After talking this all over with my wife (who is Chinese, but not biased against non-Chinese people as many Asians are), she spotted my ex-Navy G-1 leather flight jacket on the kitchen chair, where I’d left it, that I frequently wear when it’s chilly outside. It has several patches on it, from prior associations with the US Navy’s facility at NAS Jonesville (AKA: Warminster Air Development Center, despite my having been USAF) and is quite obviously a military jacket. [Think Tom Cruise in ‘TOP GUN’].

“Did you wear that at the park?” She gestured…indicating the jacket.

When I affirmed this fact, it occurred to me that perhaps…just perhaps…that young black woman in reference had ‘read’ my wearing that jacket as a sign of sympathic solidarity with the radical right-winger idiots who created such embarrassment yesterday at the National Capitol!

Perhaps…a remote possibility, I thought, but still something to ponder objectively…she had lumped me in with those disgraceful Trump-supporting yahoos who stormed the House of Representatives, since so many of them were visibly identified with the Armed Forces (as veterans) in the media coverage.

If so, was her reaction also a racist, snap-judgement misinterpretation of the situation? I am still wondering about all this, but as far as I can see it’s still more than likely a perfect example of ‘reverse racism’ in practice…

What’s your take on this (anyone's opinion except you, Mr. Pollyanna, since we all know where you'll go with this, LoL :)?

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Postscript: While recently reading author Mark Dice's excellent book, 'HOLLYWOOD PROPAGANDA' (released 2020, ISBN 978-1-943591-09-1), which examines the immense influence Hollywood 'entertainment industry' has on shaping popular culture's mass attitudes, I ran across an incident that struck a resonant chord. The book references an episode of an AMAZON Prime streaming service program, 'Hunters', in which a 'Nazi' could be seen wearing a red ball-cap with some white letters on it. This carefully and deliberately 'crafted' insinuation gave the viewer the impression that the wearer ('a Nazi') was a Trump supporter.

A couple of week ago, I experienced a sort of similar exerience in that I take our husky dogs to a VCA-affiliated veterinarian that sells a wonderful little 'Grand-Pa' style (relaxed) ball-cap that is available in a range of colors. The cap, available for both cat owners and dog owners, bears the 4-letter word 'MEOW' for cats and 'WOOF' for dogs (both in white uppercase letters) on its front.

Since I finally surrendered to the American mania for 'standardised' wear of base-ball style caps by all American males (a ubiquitously 'universal American cap', after all), I got about a dozen of the caps in 12 different colors, one of them being red. The 'WOOF' really tickles my fancy, of course, despite the fact that wearing one of these caps provides free advertising for the VCA Corporation (something I am not necessarily keen about).

At any rate, on one of our pup's thrice-daily long walks in our local park, I happened to be wearing the red version. Several times during our walk, I received scrutiny of that cap that was clearly not friendly by some younger women escorting their kids to the park's playground. These stares changed from potentially hostile to benign regard once the letters 'WOOF' were viewable, which doesn't take a  graduate degree in non-verbal language to suggest that the passers-by thought at first that my cap was a 'MAGA' cap.

Most interesting, but also a bit unsettling to realise that even wearing a cap of a certain color can provoke hostility in our presently super-charged, highly PC politicised society! Something more to reflect upon as the nation becomes progressively rabid, after the Biden/Harris election!

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Added Note: dated 10/2021:

Interesting to observe that a similar event occurred about 9 months later, at the same park with the same young black woman. I won't bore you all with the details other than to say that almost exactly the SAME sort of 'abnormal' encounter occurred AGAIN. This affirms my original notion that this 'person of color' was deliberately trying to provoke me into some sort of reactive response. Fortunately (for both of us), I kept my cool and did not react, other than to stare disbelievingly at her. This note is being added in late January of 2022. Let's all hope that this is not going to become part of the 'new normal', eh? Next time she may not be so fortunate. Her intended 'target' might be a discharged veteran fresh from Afghanistan, who won't be quite so willing to take that sort of sh*t from anyone. [What was it that Clint Eastwood said to the perp he collared in the movie DIRTY HARRY? Oh yes, "What you need to ask yourself, punk, is "Do I feel lucky?"... Indeed. ]

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ADDED NOTE: dated 8 Sep 2023

Hard to believe, but this same black woman reappeared in the same park, almost two years after the 2nd encounter (cited immediately above) and REPEATED her 'overt attitudinal display' once again in almost exactly the same manner as before! Once again, pup and I were walking calmly along on our usual afternoon 'sniff & squirt' expedition and noted the woman standing on the green, doing some stretching exercises. Not a big deal, of course; we continued to walk on about our business. Shortly, she finished the stretching and began  a slow jog around the edge of the park.

Suddenly, there she is, veering off her path to deviate over to us, doing the same weird 'end-run' as before, cutting us off, by mere inches, and then steering back to her straight course without a word or even a look. W...T...F!? If that isn't deliberately intended to provoke a reaction, then I haven't lived a full 75+ years on the face of this sad planet! As before, I didn't say a word as she pulled off this provocative, puerile maneuver, and just continued to go our way. In my collective opinion, this is about as close as someone may come to maliciously 'messing with you' as the law allows and it's a damn good thing I didn't react.

Think of it the same way you would about a Chinese warship (PRC) cutting across the bows of a US Navy warship in international waters, on the China Sea. Definitely intended to incite an incident. This time I was just ambling along in my shorts, shirt and ballcap...no evidence of being a VET to discern...so I have to wonder at this woman's incredible moxie! Is this what social interactions in the park are coming to, I wonder? What next, one has to wonder?

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MORE MISCONCEIVED DEI/RACIAL IDENTITY/CRITICAL THEORY FALLOUT IN THE LOCAL PARK: March 2025

Took the girl over to our local park this afternoon for her daily afternoon walk. As I was getting her out of the car, this late model white SUV came barreling down the street and nearly took out Nala, since her blind side gave her no warning of the speeding car, and if I hadn't yanked her out of the way, she would have been hit...probably fatally.

Couldn't believe the recklessness of the driver of that car and glared at him/her/them as it passed, vaguely noting a black female driver hidden behind the car’s ‘black-out’ glass, with two younger kids in the back seat.

Still a bit unsettled by this near miss, I crossed the street and started out across the grassy open space on the west side of the park with Nala and had gone about 100 yards when I noticed a moving presence on our left, vectoring, as near as I could determine, to collide with us at a point about 25 feet ahead of us. Looking to the left, there was that same black woman SUV driver, a plump young female in her mid-20s and a bit unremarkable in her affect urging her two young kids forward at a fast clip in a deliberate effort to cross in front of us...

Sure enough, that's exactly what she did. This incident is an almost exact parallel of a similar incident you may recall I wrote about two years back, involving another young black woman who was running along the edges of the park border. Some of you may recall my having shared that incident with you, back then. In that original instance the other person deliberately (and quite obviously) deviated from her path near the sidewalk to cross in front of me...in that instance she came so close that she almost collided with Nala. I was completely flummoxed by such behavior, only afterwards determining that this had to have been a deliberate and assertive provocation. Apparently her act was a racially motivated 'micro-aggression' seemingly intended to 'check' or challenge a perceived 'white privilege.' But why? Was this her way of making a point to ‘disrespect’ a random white person?

This sort of totally unwarranted and racially provocative behavior is clearly (to me and many other social observers, from what I have read) the result of all the black racist ‘wokeness' and DEI ideological nonsense that the white progressive liberal left has been unrelentingly drumming into the heads of not-very-astute blacks for the past several years, as best as I am able to determine. Their message (if you can call it that) is to remind whites...all whites...that THEY are now society’s second-class citizens, at least, that’s all I can interpret this senseless effrontery as being.

Fortunately, I refrained from calling this woman out for her actions (like asking her point-blank what THAT was all about) or making any less tactful remarks about it, but I was really steamed up by her completely unjustifiably discourteous and offensive behavior...especially by her initial disregard for us as unaware pedestrians on a street and almost running Nala and I down on the street!

This sort of increasingly obvious and overtly obnoxious behavior by the less astute among us is the product of toxic 'reverse racism' that is the direct result of all the Marxist/Marcusian ideological 'anti-white socialisation' not-very-bright blacks are being fed these days by the leftist progressive (and white liberal, incidentally) left. Sadly, these people appear to not be bright enough to have the first clue about how this sort of gratuitous and capricious behavior can poison our social environment and such seems to have been the case with this particular idiot. The fact that blacks were treated as lesser-humans for so long in America does not justify by any reasoned analysis perpetuating this sort of antagonistic behavior, by anyone for any reason. It is long past the point where ‘tit-for-tat’ reckoning has any place in our social matrix, or for ‘eye-for-an-eye’ vengefulness.

Tragically, thoughtfully reflective people like me...who consistently make unfailing efforts to consistently treat everyone equally and in every instance...are too often the targets of such gross, ‘scattergun style' ignorance, but that's what we find often ourselves dealing with these days, and that simply tends to put a freshly lit torch to old animosities and social divides.

Interestingly, today's issue of the EPOCH TIMES newspaper contained an article about how anti-white racism in South Africa is now so rampant that thousands of white Afrikaners are responding to Trump's announced plan to allow white Afrikaners to immigrate to the US, owing to rampant anti-white violence, criminal acts and overt prejudice from black South Africans against (predominantly) white Afrikaners. Once the ANC gained predominant control of South Africa’s legislature and government, all whites are now experiencing acrimonious acts of unwarranted retribution, simply for being white and convenient targets of opportunity. The same toxic ideologies that the Marxist/Marcusian leftists are fostering against white Africans are now being experienced over here in America (albeit to a lesser extent)...despite the fact that blacks in America number no more than about 13-14% of the total population!

It is too obvious to reassert here an earlier contention of mine that all of humanity is insane...that Earth, instead of being a model of Christianity’s “Human beings are basically good” blarney, is a planetary lunatic asylum, chock full of self-destructive, if clever and ‘semi-sentient’, completely insane bipedal lifeforms who will ultimately destroy themselves, eradicating all Homo sapiens (an ontological oxymoron, if ever there was one!).

I am sure that if our Stoic mentor Marcus Aurelius was alive today, he’d be chuckling into his fermented mead mug, to read the above...