Bitter, Black: Working the RNC Party
Bitter and Black. No, I'm not talking about big-chain coffee. I'm talking about the acrid tinge in the voice of of a man I met last night. He was one of exactly three black people at an Africa-aid group's party at the Republican Convention last night. He was serving food to a crowd of white, often wasted, and usually be-suited or party dressed conventioneers and hangers-on. The other two black people in the room were me and a female food server.
Okay, earlier in the night there was one other black person in the room ... a handsome, middle-aged gentleman who was a guest. He ran for the hills when the mediocre rock band started.
As we've said, the Republican Convention is over 90 percent white. (Being in the hall is kind of like reporting on the New Hampshire Primary or the Iowa Caucus.) The black Republicans in attendance have been making a valiant effort to hold their own events. Last night, I saw an African-American guy walking around the convention handing out flyers to every black person he could find.
I intentionally went to a non-black-specific event. As we said on our show last week, Denver became a mini Chocolate City for the Democratic convention. You didn't have to go to a specifically "black" event to see black people.
The party last night highlighted Africa aid and international relief, so I figured it would be an especially good test of how folks rolled. If you can't find black people at a party focusing on Africa, where will you at the RNC?
The party was at a big club in a party/strip club district in Minneapolis. The streets were filled with drunk people, mainly twenty-somethings, and a zillion-point-five riot police who had just battled it out with protestors.
Outside the door were event staffers, who were white; and local security guards, who were black men. Inside, all the bartenders were white but all the food servers were black or Latino. A acquaintance of mine once told me that one way she judged character was whether people looked their waiters or servers in the eye and treated them as people, instead of looking down at the menu and ordering or snatching food off trays. The crowd at this event was largely grab-n-go ... very little eye contact with the people who were helping to make their night a happy one.
So: I talked to the one black man left in the room, one of the men passing empanadas on a tray. I'd noticed earlier that he was wearing pink sponge earplugs, even though the music wasn't that loud. I struck up a conversation with him, told him a journalist and that I'd just come from Denver.
He looked at me with a mix of admiration and envy. "You witnessed history."
Then he pulled out one of his earplugs. "The only reason I'm wearing these things is so that if anyone tries to talk to me, I will say, "I can't hear you.'" His disdain for the crowd was palpable. Most of the crowd's inability to connect with the people serving them was palpable as well.
As I mentioned to the gentleman serving, the Republican Convention is history too. But obviously some people, including some LOCAL people, feel shut out of that moment.
8:16 PM ET | 09- 4-2008 | permalink
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