June 5

When I was in my early twenties, I remember reading John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me—a nonfiction account of how he passed himself off as a black man in the southern States to document the oppression, humiliation and hopelessness of “niggers” in late-1950s America. I must have been pretty moved by it, because one of the first songs I ever wrote was based on the picture Griffin gave of that despair-filled life:

BORN IN POVERTY

We were born in poverty

We struggled to survive

They stacked the decks

But the welfare checks

Kept us more or less alive

In a tenement shoebox

On the Lower East Side

We were man and a woman

Husband and wife

Maybe someday we’d have a child

And we dreamed of a better life

‘Cause it was okay to dream

And no one could deny

That it was okay to dream

We were born in poverty

We struggled to stay alive

The wind would blow

And the time stood still

‘Cause his hands were too tired

And not having enough to eat

It was hard to do what was right

When some have so little

And some have so much

When truth is all black and white

And the night coming tenderly

And the night coming tenderly

Thicker than the smog

And darker than the stars

In a tenement shoebox

On the Lower East Side

Lived a welfare woman

Her unemployed man

And their soon-to-be-born child

And they dreamed of a better life

‘Cause it was okay to dream

And no one could deny

It was still okay to dream

And the night coming tenderly

And the night coming tenderly

Darker than the stars

Darkest before the dawn

Courage to open your eyes

Courage to carry on

And the night coming tenderly

So anyway, I was at the intersection of Bloor and Spadina half an hour before sunset today, waiting for the lights to change. Looking for all the world like Jesus on his way home after a long day of carpentry, wanting nothing more than a hot shower and a soft bed. There were just a few other pedestrians around, including a nondescript, teenage black kid in a football jersey standing behind me on the curb.

The “Walk” signal finally shows, and as I stride across Spadina from the 7-11 on the northwest corner, the kid comes right up behind me, and pushes me with his forearm across my upper back, saying “This is what I’m gonna do to you.”

It didn’t even put me off balance, and it actually tickled more than it hurt, but still: What the hell is this idiot doing?

So I turned around and took a step backward:

“Get away from me!”

He takes another step toward me, waving his hands around me, like he’s trying to provoke me into hitting him ... so that he’s got an excuse to hit back, I guess.

He wants to start a fight? What the hell kind of street cred could there possibly be for some little black shit going around beating up middle-aged hippies? What was he gonna tell his posse?

“Yo, this muthafuckin’ old hippie comes at me from outta fuckin’ nowhere, bro. Musta been high on dope or somethin’....”

Anyway, the budding criminal is only around fifteen, and scrawny as hell—I’ve only been in one playground fight my entire life, but I could’ve easily stood my own against him, even being more than twice his age. So I’m sure he’s used to being the one who gets picked on. And he’s got the crookedest front teeth I’ve ever seen.

I step back again, away from him:

“Get away from me!”

The jerk finally turns away, showing the big #54 on the back of his jersey—his favorite football player, and probably also his IQ.

He walks twenty yards down the street, intermittently looking back at me, suspiciously.

The little bastard finally stops and turns around again, and I say to him:

“What is wrong with you?”

He cups his hand to his ear:

“Huh?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Fuck off.”

And he turns and walks away, yapping on his cell phone.

He has money enough for Nikes and a cell phone, but not for braces. And with that kind of inability to prioritize, he’s fit to do what with his life? Maybe manage a McDonald’s?

No, not even that. ‘Cause you have to be able to prioritize there, too.

So I wearily dragged my white hippie ass up into the dorm, had that hot shower, put on some Pink Floyd, and lay down on my bed under the last rays of a purple-red, kaleidoscopic sunset. Still shaken by that utterly unprovoked black tickle-attack, and pondering the life of a hippie in a short-haired world.

Back when I had a real job, I used to take in some major concerts at the Air Canada Center and in other venues around the city—Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello and the like. And there was always a dirty-blond girl who used to hang around the entrances, offering little sheets with what looked like colorful, circular Avery labels on them. Her face would light right up when she saw me and my long, obviously drug-taking hair coming—I must’ve looked to her like a sure sale.

Tripping to Dark Side...

On LSD...

The light, psychedelically

Hip like me.

Of course, I never actually purchased any of those funny labels from Avery-Girl. In fact, although you wouldn’t know it to look at me, I’ve never even done illicit drugs.

(“What, never?” “Well, hardly ever!”—Gilbert and Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore.)

Anyway, this whole experience tonight, in being pushed around from behind by Kid Gangsta just because of my long hair and sandals, got me thinking:

Maybe it wasn’t the Jews or the Romans that killed Jesus.

Maybe it was the blacks.

And maybe they didn’t crucify him, ‘cause even though that’s what they really wanted to do to get that no-good Savior off the streets, it would have been way too obvious. Maybe instead they just had some bucktoothed teenage cretin sneak up from behind when the Lord was minding his own business, and push him around, trying to make the Son of God lose his temper and take a swing at the little criminal.

But then I thought: Would they really kill one of their own preachers?

Because in Revelation, Jesus shows up with brass- or copper-colored feet, which some Afrocentrists take as proof that he was black. And Malcolm X himself said Jesus wasn’t white. So if Morgan Freeman could play God in Bruce Almighty ... and if the Bible is on-side ... well then, good golly, why couldn’t Christ have been black?

Nigger Jesus would take some getting used to, though. Almost like if it turned out that Martin Luther King Jr. was really just ... well, Martin Luther. In blackface, at a minstrel show.

Still, if the world could live for centuries with a blond, blue-eyed King of the Jews, without batting a Caucasian eye, there’s no reason why we couldn’t get used to a Christmas Story in which three Wise Gangstas followed the Bling of the East to the birthplace of baby Nigger Jesus ... bringing him gifts of a do-rag, a basketball, and a gold-plated 9 mm Glock.

I should maybe run that whole idea past my cousin Roger.

Yes, he is black. Adopted by a “good Christian” family—my Aunt Betty and Uncle Henry. They were the nearest neighbors to my family’s homestead south of Winnipeg, so I grew up playing shinny with Rog’ and his older (white) brother, who was my best friend in elementary school—even if he did look a little too much like Ken Dryden of the hated Montreal Canadiens, against my hero, Gerry Cheevers.

It would never have occurred to me to judge Roger, or anyone else, on the color of his skin ... or the length or the wooliness of his hair. Much less would I have ever even thought of hurling a racist epithet at such a fine and honest young man—or by now, a fine middle-aged man.

That minimal human tolerance and decency, sadly, did not stop other children in that monotonously white and literally retarded community from pushing Roger around and into the brick walls of our local school simply for the color of his skin, as I found out years later. (Thirty percent of the students there today are “special” ones. It’s not a special school; that’s just a product of the inbred gene pool.) Nor did it stop the moron phys-ed instructor from witnessing that abuse, and just laughing it off as if it was some kind of “game.”

That was a long time ago, in the ’70s. Yet I know for a fact, from speaking to big-band musicians in Toronto, that there are, to this day, country clubs here where, if you want the gig, you will have to find a white drummer to sit in for your regular one, if the latter happens to be black.

With musicians being so consistently “color-blind” in favor of their shared language and culture of music, that exclusion in particular is inexcusable and tragic.

Because, whatever you may think of the intelligence of the average drummer, it’s not as though those rich white club members just wanted to have somewhere they could go with their blond trophy wives, without having to worry about being attacked from behind by some 54-IQ criminal whenever they turned their backs.

Although, if that had been their motivation, I could sort of understand where they were coming from. Because we all deserve to have a place like that.

Roger deserved it, and I do too.