I was recently in, well, a liquor store. The tall, fit young man ahead of me (white, obviously) looked like he might have played lacrosse for Georgetown, though for all I know he could have been a high school dropout. He was speaking to a thirty-something black guy behind the counter. Further on down the counter, there were three more black guys.
The white guy was saying something about how he had a pair of running shoes that he no longer needed, shoes that were in really good shape and did the black guy have a friend who might need some shoes? The black guy did a very good job of pretending not to know how totally stupid and condescending the white guy was being, and after about a minute or two of back and forth he managed to get rid of the guy without telling him to go fuck himself, which must have taken quite a bit of self-discipline. The minute the kid left, of course, the four black dudes exploded in derisive laughter.
If I had had my act together I would have run after the white kid and told that offering your second-hand shit to black guys is not exactly what Ta-Nehisi Coates meant by “reparations”, but, well, it was getting close to noon and I was getting the shakes, and I was missing my Ever Clear. So, in the off chance that you who are reading this are that random white guy, do not go around offering your second-hand shit to black guys! Or, really, anyone else!
