Dear John from Vancouver (Racist Behaviour)
Declaring sins on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 15, 2026
“We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow-worm.” — Winston Churchill
Dear John in Kerrisdale,
Simply playing dress-up at Supreme on Sunset and enjoying Wu-Tang’s “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’”1 does not make one a Freedom Rider. I was thinking about the conversation we had and what you said your partner told you. To me, their criticism reads less as hurtful and more as paradigm-challenging. I will share several insights I have gained just by virtue of growing older, paying attention to myself, and socialising with a wide variety of people.
In order to avoid generalisations and stereotypes, I’m going to focus solely on the specific behaviours you told me about and the specific things that you said were called out by your ex.
I think your partner might be onto something. It is entirely possible that the customer service representative who processed your refund might not have been pleasantly surprised when you told him, unsolicited, that he “looks like a better-looking Paul Mooney.” And—hear me out—the clerk at the electronics store might not have been impressed when you started talking about Huey P. Newton, apropos of nothing. Don’t assume.
Unless they introduced the conversation naturally, just give the dudes a break. They might never say anything, of course, because your interactions with them were one-off encounters in their workplaces. You told me that your partner accused you of gratuitous virtue/knowledge-signalling. I see it that way too. My suggestion is the same as your partner’s: just buy your rechargeable batteries, say “thank you”, and move on.
Sometimes attempts to prove cultural awareness can accidentally reveal self-consciousness. I believe that there’s definitely something going on there.
Your partner observed that after you watched that Black-ish episode, “The Nod,”2 you started nodding to every man you passed as per Andre’s instructions to his son.
Consider this: you might simply be confusing everyone you nod to. They might be wondering, “What’s going on? Do I know him? Is there a booger out of my nose? Is he flirting with me?”
I do not think that Andre’s advice to his son in “The Nod” was necessarily intended to be an instruction manual for you and me.
Do you remember telling me that it took decades for you to develop the self-control to stop staring at a woman’s breasts when you addressed them? That is a generalisable skill: one that I—and clearly your ex too—would suggest you apply more broadly, culturally and metaphorically speaking.
I noticed that you tend to centre conversations on yourself. You mentioned how much you identify with Thomas Sowell and that you even relate to him because he “kind of looks and talks like your grandpa, who also had an economics degree and was a university professor at UCLA around the same time.” But your grandpa grew up in a very different environment, with experiences that shaped him in ways unique to his own time and place. Your grandpa had a very different experience.
You’re from Bellevue and 22nd Street in West Vancouver, one of the wealthiest areas in Canada, not Flatbush and Church in Brooklyn.
You’re not Chuck D. You’re not even Michael Rapaport.
And just like your ex said to you, if your own father said the exact same things Dr. Sowell did—and he did—I would ask him to please stop embarrassing me at Denny’s. And I have asked my dad this. My dad was so embarrassing.
“I feel you, youngblood, no cap.”
I sometimes talk this way at home around my son, and I do it just to make his head explode. My son is at that age when he hates his old man trying to be cool. Do I talk like that in the rest of the world? Nope. Just to torture my son by being uncool. That’s fun. But I don’t clown it up for my neighbour, Yebi. Nope. Yebi gets: “Hey, what’s up?” which is exactly what I might say to everyone else in my orbit, other than my son, whom I purposely torture with dad jokes.
You may be following patterns many people—including myself—have struggled with, sometimes making people uncomfortable without meaning to. Although I do indeed mean to embarrass my son when we’re alone. Simple pleasures.
You can break that cycle.
Don’t believe me?
You told me that your partner observed that ever since you saw Michael K. Williams portray Omar in The Wire3, you adopted the phrase “I feel you” with your friends and family, but “never, ever with her family.” So you clearly are conscious of this and know when to can it.
If you turn the vernacular on for some and off for others, then what she says about it being performative appears to be true. It’s inauthentic.
Would you feel equally comfortable using those words with everyone, everywhere, or only in certain situations?
If the answer to that first question is “no”, then you probably see where I am going with this and your ex may have a point.
So hey—take this with a grain of salt. I might be wrong. But since you asked me...
Anyway, something to ponder.
It’s like Clement Attlee used to say: “Be better, mothah f—ah!"
Peace out, gotta jump, G. A.
P.S. One day we’ll all live in Wakanda. Stay Golden, Pony Boy.4
That’s the kind of thing I say to my son. He hates it. “Shut up, Dad, you’re so stupid.” It gives me joy. I suppose I have fallen short, too. But we are not in Wakanda yet, so until then, Sit on it, Potsie.