Motel Williams: "Welcome to the first B.I.D. (Blacks in Denial) conference. Before I begin my brief speech, I want everyone to know that I'm not black; I'm Scandinavian!
"I must confess that I've been a black person in denial most of my life. I denied my racial identity when my mean old third-grade teacher called all of us black kids 'smart dummies.' My classmates didn't know how to react to such a statement and were ashamed. I was bold enough to ask the mean old third-grade teacher: 'So you think we are stupid?' She got angry, whacked my butt with a yardstick, grabbed me by greasy jherri hair perm and threw me out of the class. From that moment on, I decided not to be black.
"The election of the first black president will not change my perspective, either. All I've witnessed are massive acts of bigotry, prejudice, anger and hate, extremely potent, like weapons of mass destruction. And in a troubled economy, the self-proclaimed equal-opportunity employer makes jobs scarce for the individual with an ethnic-sounding name.
"As the organizer of the B.I.D. Conference, I'm here to help you survive within a so-called post-racial society where employer Master Cholly cracks the whip of hypocrisy and intolerance. For those job seekers with first names such as Pedro, Shaniqua, Abdullah, Roscoe, Queenie-Mae or Pookie, nobody wants to hire youunless your name is Emily or Greg. And this is why I'm not black; I'm Serbo-Croatian."
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