I could pass. I’m white, male, straight, of more or less average appearance (and with something approaching a mutant power of perception filtering to disappear in a crowd). If I just kept my mouth shut and went right along, there would be nothing at all to distinguish me from the vast army of middle-class hicks that populate the Hookworm Belt one step up from the trailer park. Hell, I did pass. I spent most of eighth grade slouching and slurring and using words like “hisself” that I knew goddamn well weren’t within a thousand miles of correct English. And I did it to try to get by. 1986 was the worst year of my life that didn’t involve death.
If I were willing to just switch off my brain, I could go along and get along just fine and nobody would be the wiser. I don’t have to be the kind of weirdo I was in elementary school, or the outcast I was in undergrad. I was a minority – not a patch on people with different skin color or sexuality, but definitely not normal – from the worst place in America not to be normal. But I could get by without a peep.
All I have to do is acquiesce.
When in fact, I want just the opposite. I want to rage out. I want my team to impose its views on the minority. I want Tennessee fans to be too terrified to set foot on the BART to Berkeley and I want people scared to put “Yes On 8” stickers on their car for fear of the eggs and rocks and I want listening to AM talk radio to be regarded as a deviance on par with kiddie porn. But that doesn’t happen, because we have to be tolerant of those who have different beliefs and we have to respect diversity even when it wants to round us up and put us in camps.
Just once, before I die, I’d love to see a time when bigotry, ignorance and just plain asshole stop being treated as valid points of view and start being regarded for what they are – deviant behavior. This is why I make a piss-poor liberal, and why I know the Alabama DNA is too tightly woven around my brainstem to ever be truly overcome. I don’t want to escape, I don’t want my freedom, I don’t want peace and quiet, I don’t want to just walk away – I want revenge.