"Blind ignorance does mislead us O! wretched morals... open your eyes!" -Leonardo Da Vinci
I feel a little awkward telling this story, because I do not wish to laugh at the plight of another human being, but at the same time, cannot help but shake my head and laugh at the sheer irony of this entire situation.
A few days ago, my brother and his friend were having coffee with an elderly church leader and his friend from the south. This friend was a blind caucasian man, and turned out to be a recognizable racist. My brother, who is a tatted up caucasian, and his friend, who is black and also tatted, were talking with this man about education and the state of society, when the man began to detour and go on about race. He eventually told them in confidence, "I am so glad to be talking to two educated white men. The other races are just no doing it." Now, my brother and his friend are not ones to pass up opportunities for sarcasm, and do not discriminate. So his friend, continued to play along, and decided to up the stakes with racist ideas and thoughts, to see how far he could get. When this blind man's friend made his way back to the table, and realized what was going on, he told his friend "you know [my brother's friend] is black right?" But the blind man just argued that that was not true. After a while more of arguing, my brother then told him, "it's ok, I am pretty sure that everyone looks black to you."
These sentiments were shared when another friend of my brother, who is a tatted up mexican man, joined the conversation and the blind man began to go on about how trashy tattoos look on people, and judged that people with tats are essentially the ingrates of society. After a while of debating, my bro's friend, dumbfound, realized that he was arguing about how tattoos look on people with a man who has never seen a tattoo in his life, and never will, and who doesn't seem to understand that he is debating this with a man that was covered in tats and very educated. So he asked him, "I'm sorry, but how can you even judge someone with tattoos if you have never seen someone with tattoos?"
I felt bad for the man, making such a fool out of himself, but at the same time, he was so insistent, it seems, on verbalizing his points of view, which, right or wrong, we all have the right to do. This though, was too reminiscent of a Dave Chappelle joke and skit, where a secretive author of a white supremacist prominent publication turns out to be a blind black man. What do you do?
