The Gods of Color

by Gunnar Sinclaire

  Rick fell in behind the students, and as he neared the open door, a hand clapped down on his back. It was Pedro, his grappling opponent. Two other members of the FCP accompanied him—Jack and James Tanner—and after some conjectures as to why they all had been invited, the four men entered the building and took seats at the back of the class.

  “I feel like I’m in school again,” whispered James.

  “Yeah. Who’s the hottie with the white sweater . . . I wanna take her to the prom.” Jack laughed.

  “Shut up, guys,” admonished Rick. “You’re gonna get us sent to detention.”

  “Yeah, stop ogling the young women,” teased Pedro.

  “Listen, you crazy-ass conquistador, I’m only twenty-five. She’s what, like eighteen? That’s still fair game.” Jack laughed again.

  Mrs. Stewart’s voice quieted the men.

  “Class, as I’m sure you’ve already noted, we have some visitors with us today. These men are members of the FCP, and are here to observe our class. It’s no accident that they were invited to join us on a Friday, the day our school reserves for the inculcation of survival skills and general tactics that you will hopefully have the opportunity to impart to your children someday.

  “It was at my request that these men were invited. I believe that we all have things to learn. There are ideas and paradigms that are of timeless value to our people no matter their age or education. If I receive positive feedback from our observers today, I will invite other members to join us on subsequent Fridays as well. My intent is to plant the seeds of survival in as many minds as possible, so that, God forbid, if our organization is one day torn asunder, there will be those with the knowledge to set out and plant hope anew. Please stand with me and recite the original Pledge of Allegiance so that we may begin our discussion.”

  Rick stood along with the rest of class, and eyed the American flag as he recited the words. It felt damned refreshing intoning the Pledge with young people. How different the other classes in America began, with stiff arms and vows to Divine Color.

  After the Pledge the students took their seats, and Mrs. Stewart tinkered with a media console at her desk. After several moments of whisking her finger across a screen, and dropping icons here and there, she looked back at the four men.

  “As I mentioned, Fridays are not traditional school days here, so I’m afraid if you boys were hoping for a lesson in writing style or grammar you’re, to use the technical expression, S.O.L.”

  Many of the students laughed. Even the one-armed boy, his new jacket still on, looked back at Rick and smiled.

  “But I wanted to diagram sentences,” piped Jack, grinning.

  “I’m sorry, sir, no diagramming today,” she apologized. “Class, since our semester began I’ve drilled you with the proper procedure to critically evaluate literature, poetry, and historical writing. I’ve taught you the proper questions to ask yourselves. I’ve taught you how to analyze diction. I’ve taught you about the different methodologies used in historiography. Now, I want you to apply those same tools to critically evaluate video media. I’ve got some commercials here, from different eras, for you to view and analyze.”

  “But how can we do that?” asked a student. “A literary work is so much more complex than a commercial.”

  “Yes, you’re right. But you’ll find that application of the tools I’ve provided you with will still prove fruitful. I want you all to at least give it a shot. I’m going to start you with one from the year 2015.”

  “Were we even persecuted back then?” Asked the boy who had danced with the strawberry blond.

  “Yes, though by and large it was unperceived by us. We were too swept up in professional sports and media-driven consumerism to care. At that time, the power in this country was slowly but steadily shifting hands,” Margaret explained.

  “From white hands to brown hands.” Jack’s brother, James, laughed. “And now from brown hands to gray.”

  “All right, everyone, I’m about to hit play. This first one’s from 2014.”

  A pane of light and color shot up from a projector on the floor. Within moments the screen had materialized in a default royal blue. The teacher punched a button, and a picture suddenly appeared.

  Ringing phones and chatter funneled through the classroom’s speakers, and a busy office scene appeared on the screen. The camera panned over several open cubicles, wherein were seated workers typing furiously on keyboards. An Asian woman, a black man, a white woman, and a Hispanic man diligently toiled at their computers while multitasking telephone calls and jotting notes.

  Finally, the viewer’s perspective settled on the last cubicle. This one was occupied by a white man. He was slender, balding, and sleepy-eyed. He wore a short-sleeve white dress shirt slopped with food. Pillars of neglected mail and documents slouched drunkenly on his desk. His nose was scarlet, and a box of tissues crowned one of the stacks of mail.

  “Not all cold medicines are created equal,” said an authoritative voice. “If he had been smart, he would have chosen Cold-Nuke at the first sign of illness.” The screen split in two, and was divided by a red line. On the left was the white man, slovenly dressed, staring dumbly at a box of tablets labeled “Brand X.” On the right was the sharply dressed black man from one of the first cubicles, grinning as he withdrew a tablet from his box of Cold-Nuke.

  “Cold-Nuke works fast to relieve cold symptoms within an hour. And its time-release mechanism ensures twelve hours of cold-fighting action.”

  The white man tossed and turned, alone, in his single bed, while the black man slept soundly next to a woman, a somnambulant smile on his face. The commercial then transitioned into a final scene, where all the employees were in a meeting room. The black man was leading a discussion, the women gazing at him in admiration as if in the company of a sage. Suddenly, the white man began to sneeze uncontrollably, and wiped his nose with his shirt sleeve. The white women looked disgustedly at the cold-sufferer, and scooted their chairs closer to the black man.

  “Don’t you wish everyone were smart enough to use Cold-Nuke?” the voice inquired, before the commercial faded.

  Several hands were raised in the class, but Mrs. Stewart proceeded directly to the next commercial.

  “This one’s from 2021,” she noted.

  Another office scene filled the screen. But, strangely, it depicted a group of eight white executives seated around a stately board room table. The group was composed of a balanced array of men and women, all smartly dressed. Two of the men were flicking a piece of paper folded into a tight triangle through each other other’s fingers positioned like field goal posts. A woman was doodling in the margins of her notebook. Another woman was bending and elongating paper clips and lining them up on the desk in rows. The other whites were busy texting on their cell phones or playing handheld video games.

  “As you all are aware,” a tall, white, distinguished man addressed the group from the head of the table, “our competitor, Cable One, has just posted first quarter results—they’re blowing us out of the water.”

  “Yes!” exclaimed one of the men playing paper football as he sailed a shot between his friend’s fingers.

  The CEO frowned. “What, may I ask, should we do to reassert ourselves?” he asked, eyes scanning the group.

  “How ‘bout we charge more and offer less channels,” chirped a woman, body jerking this way and that to avoid hostile fire in her handheld game. “That way we’ll make a bigger profit next time and have a better bottom line.”

  “Yeah, and we should also ask for aid from the government,” said another white woman as she spun a glowing yoyo.

  “Heck yeah,” agreed a man with glasses, “and let’s also fudge our second quarter results a little by a few decimal places to really help us along.”

  “Great ideas, folks.” The CEO applauded, and smiled deviously. “Sounds like we’ll be back up and running strong in no time.”

  In a snap the commercial had transitioned to another, more c
olorful boardroom. Of the eight businessmen and women seated at the table, only one was white. Their leader, a powerful, well-dressed black man, gestured toward a video screen depicting a steadily inclining green line. The attendees were alert and focused, jotting notes and sponging their leader’s wisdom.

  “Here at Cable One,” spoke a black female narrator, “we believe that honesty, integrity, and hard work will guide a business to success. Unlike our competitors, our first duty is to the customer. We tirelessly work to provide the best picture, the most channels, and the best customer service of any cable company in the country, and our efforts have not gone unnoticed. This year, the United Cable Agency rated us the best cable provider in America. We have received this accolade five years in a row, and we hope to receive it many more. Thank you, America, for choosing Cable One.”

  Margaret paused the video and walked from her media station to the front of the class.

  “There are innumerable commercials from this era of U.S. broadcasting like the two you just viewed. Their common denominator, of course, is the race of their hapless victims. Who would like to analyze these two commercials for me?”

  Most of the students raised their hands, but the strawberry blond ascended her fingers first.

  “Erin, tell us about the subtle poison ebbing from this propaganda.”

  The girl smiled, and ran a hand through her hair.

  “Well, by modern standards these commercials strike most of us as benign.” Her voice was melodious and feminine. “In both of them, the attack on our people is pretty veiled rather than explicit. Both commercials invoke the twenty-first century stereotype of the white male as befuddled fool or neurotic jester. You can see how the non-whites are portrayed as efficient and intelligent, while the white man is shown as an unproductive, bothersome loser. If the white man happens to be intelligent, he uses his intelligence to cheat people. And honestly, the white women aren’t depicted much better.”

  “Good analysis,” said Mrs. Stewart. “I know you have more to say, Erin, but let me give someone else a chance.”

  “Klement?” She smiled at the one-armed boy, who slowly lowered his hand. “That’s a nice jacket you have there. Can you tell us anything about the commercial?”

  He blushed as faces turned his way.

  “Business,” he uttered. “Both were about business. The white people . . . they cannot . . . they can’t . . . they are not good workers.”

  “Excellent point. It’s not a coincidence that most of these commercials occur in an office environment. What boss, in their right mind, would hire these white idiots? So, Klement, tell me the subtext of these commercials.”

  “That white people are stupid . . . and not good workers.” He gulped, repressed a cough, and stared at his teacher expectantly.

  “Good work. This is actually the first time I’ve seen you raise your hand this whole semester. I hope this is the beginning of a trend. And your grasp of English is improving.” She smiled. “How about some input from our visitors back there. Can any of you four offer any comments?”

  Rick, who had been taking notes on a digital pad, raised his hand. Margaret pointed his way, and he was about to introduce himself to the class when he realized that it might not be a good idea to broadcast his name to people that might unwittingly divulge his whereabouts.

  “I just wanted to point out that while the whites in these commercials are jester-like, there’s something that prevents them from completely assuming that role. Jesters, because of their bumbling ways and innocence, kind of trigger sympathy in an audience. They dance, they fall, the audience laughs. We laugh at them, but we sympathize with them, maybe even pity them, too.

  “In these commercials, though, the whites are unsympathetic jesters. Their pranks and cleverness are outweighed by their asocial eccentricities and offensiveness. In the first commercial, the white guy was rudely sneezing on everyone. In the second, the head white guy was a white collar criminal slimeball with a court of white fools. So the white male’s not just a jester—he’s a dysfunctional, swindling, sneaky, jerk. Definitely not the kind of guy you want in a work environment. And definitely not the kind of guy a successful white female wants as a boyfriend or spouse. Contrast the white jester with the noble, strong, intelligent, confident black man.”

  “That’s a shrewd analysis.” Mrs. Stewart nodded. “I can see why my husband values you. And you’re right, the litany of positive adjectives associated with blacks by the media is endless. But you forgot sensitive, self-sacrificing, ingenious, and honorable.” The teacher laughed.

  “The contrast in the second commercial was so obvious,” spoke up Pedro, his dark, Mediterranean eyes flashing. “I mean, what we had there was an opposition between stupid and smart, mistruth and honesty, bad and good . . . and, oh yeah, white and black. God, could they have gotten any more blunt with the racial makeup of that first boardroom filled with losers and cheats?”

  “Bingo,” congratulated Mrs. Stewart. “The white homogeneity of the first boardroom is your first tip off as to who the bad guys will be. By the end of the commercial, you will not only associate failure with whiteness, but greed, fraud, laziness, and stupidity as well.”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.” Jack laughed, flicking a piece of paper folded into a triangle off James’s head. “So what am I supposed to do? Drown myself in sorrow with cold beer and old football games? You’re preaching to the choir, Mrs. Stewart. I know I’m the only white guy left on my street. I know I’m just about the only white person in the whole friggin’ grocery store when I do my shoppin’. I know that on the off chance I find a decent lookin’ white girl she treats me like sh. . .well, you get the point.”

  The teacher frowned at Jack and folded her arms.

  “That’s alarming,” she noted, as if to herself. “So they’re not even interested in the white ‘bad boy’ types anymore.” She turned back toward her media console and was about to resume the video but stopped and faced the class again. “I’m sorry, young man,” she addressed Jack, “but something you said caught my interest—explain more about the way white girls treat you. If you don’t mind, of course.”

  Jack smiled and ran his fingers along his goatee.

  “It sucks,” he confessed, his brown eyes falling diagonally toward the carpet. “They don’t like me ‘cause I’m white. Some of them have told me that point blank. And with others that I’ve hit on that blew me off—well, some of ‘em I see a few days later with some thug lookin’ Aztec or see ‘em grindin’ on a dance floor with their girlfriends lesbo style makin’ out with other chicks. You know, Mr. Stewart and George have all this big talk about findin’ a good white girl to marry and have kids with. Well, that’s easier said than done, because I can’t even find a white chick that would hold my friggen’ hand at the movies.”

  Jack sighed, and folded his lean, muscular arms. Many of the male students in the class nodded in agreement.

  “He’s right,” spoke up the youth who had danced with Erin. “Until I found Erin, and we started dating, I didn’t know what the heck I was gonna do. All the other white girls I tried to talk to were bitchy to me and blew me off. It seemed to be a game to them . . . how bad they could hurt me.”

  “Honestly,” spoke Jack in an afterthought, “come to think of it, most of the chicks that blow me off don’t have the hots for some non-white guy and they ain’t really lesbo. They’re like asexual or somethin’. Flirtin’ with ‘em is like tryin’ to start an old car. The engine coughs and rolls but it never starts. They got no drive . . . they got no desire to want a man or a family. And if they don’t want kids, what the hell do they really need us for anyway?”

  “Yeah,” contributed another male student, “and on the off chance you do see a white couple our age, the guy is usually some little wuss. He usually looks like a chick himself. Sissy, weak, metro-sexuals are the only kind of white guy that has any chance at landing a hot white girl these days.” He caught a glare from Erin’s boyfriend. “Outsid
e of the FCP, I mean. And that’s because white girls are taught by the media to hate white men who have power. If you’re a white guy with muscles, a deep voice, a confident walk, or a conservative viewpoint—most white girls won’t touch you.”

  A girl in a tan jacket sat up, her brown ponytail falling around a shoulder. She raised her hand.

  “Yes, Jordan?” Margaret smiled.

  “I agree that lots of white women today have lost interest in having husbands and children,” the girl spoke. “Lots of them would rather just party with their girlfriends and put their careers above trying to have a family. And I think that’s a shame. That being said, however, I think that men were the ones who drove them to this, in part. The cheating, the beating, the verbal abuse, the drunkenness—I think white women just kind of got tired of it and decided they’d rather not play that game anymore. They learned from their own mothers who got dumped that once a guy hits his mid-life crisis he jettisons his wife and kids for a younger woman—and that’s true for most men, no matter their race.”

  Some of the other girls nodded in agreement.

  “Well, I don’t really care who started it,” exclaimed Jack, face now animated. “Maybe you’re right,” he looked at the girl who had just spoken, “maybe men are the ones we should blame first. That’s fine. Done. But now what do we do about it, because this mentality, on both sides, is stoppin’ our people from havin’ kids.”

  Jack was silent for a moment, but then shook his head and blurted out, “And I’m not into beatin’, cheatin’, or verbal abuse. And it’s not like I’m askin’ for a Ms. Princess or somethin’—I know I’m a rough around the edges kind of guy—I’m just lookin’ for a fairly attractive girl who would treat me nice and be loyal to me—and I can’t find one. So wha’do I do, Mrs. Stewart? Cause your hubby’s livin’ in dream world with his ‘find a nice white girl’ lectures.”