It’s a big billboard. New, or at least I haven’t noticed it before. It’s black and white, with a big square logo that kind of reminds me of the World Wildlife Fund panda bear, except if the panda was a man in a plaid shirt and baseball cap. Instead of ‘WWF,’ it says ‘SWM.’
SWM? A dating service for straight white males? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. That’s like a chess set with only the white pieces.
Shit, it’s the Briggsmore Avenue exit!
I remember just in time that it’s the exit to get to Sprouts, Walmart, Grocery Outlet, Safeway, etc. It seems like every grocery store in Modesto is off Briggsmore Avenue. I hit my turn signal and the brakes, and pass the billboard, nestled just before the off-ramp, nice and slow.
So I can read that, in this case, SWM is not a category but an injunction: Save the White Man.
Well, that’s a new one.
As I push through the doors into Sprouts, I give Imogen a jingle. I don’t want to get home and discover she has adopted some new miracle diet and has sworn off meat, or gluten, or who knows what. Thankfully, she has not.
The butcher hands me a pair of fat rib-eye steaks wrapped in paper, and I nod a thank-you at him as I put them in my basket. I’m about to sign off, when I remember the billboard.
“Hey, Imogen, are you aware of any white supremacy groups active in California?”
“Besides the Republican party?” she asks.
“Ha.”
In the produce section now, I add a pair of russet potatoes to my basket.
“Not joking,” she says. “Brown folks gotta stay abreast of hotbeds of hatred. It’s a matter of survival. Your Tea Party and Republican buddies may not be apex predators, but they’re way more commonplace, and responsible for a lot more inequality in the world than neo-Nazis. Beside the Republicans, there are maybe twenty or so hate groups in California.”
“Wow. Here in California?”
The asparagus looks good. I wouldn’t have thought it was asparagus season. I pop a bunch into my basket.
“Yeah. Why are you surprised?”
“Well, it’s California. We’re the Left Coast.”
An older woman feeling up the cheerfully colored piles of citrus gives me a look. I better get off the phone or get out of here. Preferably both.
“You are really living in a fool’s paradise,” says Imogen. “Racism, including white supremacy, was never eradicated in the US. We never even got to the point that racism was rare. Something like one in five whites express racial animus in surveys,12 and those are the folks willing to cop to it.”
Oh my God, she’s going to start using footnotes. I need to head her off at the pass.
“Don’t start with the social science, Mo. Get to the point.”
I’ve made it to the checkout area and weigh the longer express line against the all-comers line with a couple folks carrying overflowing baskets. Express line it is.
“The point is, Isaiah, if racism is that commonplace, you’d expect racists to show up in any reasonable sample size. Unless the group is itty-bitty, or you skew the sample, like in a gathering for some kumbaya-type global warming or marriage equality business, they’re likely to be there. My guess is that if you get any random sample of a hundred white folks together, you’ll get a bunch of hard-core racists in the group. Even a couple dozen white folks is more likely than not to have a couple racists in it.”
I look around me and wonder if a farmers’ market–type grocery store is sufficiently kumbaya to have weeded out the racists. The folks in the check-out lines have a crunchy-lite vibe for the most part. Hippie-ish shoes (some clogs, some flip-flops).
But the guy behind me in line sports studded Doc Martens and a bunch of leather and tats, along with a shaved head. That could definitely go either way.
Imogen (surprise!) is still talking. “Modesto has 200,000 people. So it’s no surprise there’s a hate group within ten miles. It’s just up the 108, in Oakdale, the Cowboy Capital of the World, where we ran into your buddy Clive. They’re a chapter of Identity Evropa. There are groups in Silicon Valley too. Near us. There’s a Daily Stormer chapter in Santa Cruz and another in Mountain View. They’re book clubs, if you can believe it. They read Nazi ‘literature,’ whatever that is.”13
“How do you know all this?”
“Literacy, Iz. Working for me. That and the Southern Poverty Law Center has a website, complete with a Hate Map.14 Why, what’s up?”
But I’ve reached the front of the express check-out line, the cashier is asking if I want bags, and I want to get away from the leather-clad, tattooed potential Nazi behind me, just in case.
“Probably nothing,” I say, hanging up on Imogen.
23
Dave’s BBQ
Friday, September 28th, 39 days until the midterms
Imogen and I debate the merits of takeout from Ohana on McHenry versus Dave’s BBQ on West Rumble Road. She wants a taste of Hawaii, maybe tonkatsu or kalua pig. I have a hankering for barbecue sauce and talk her into Dave’s by telling her pulled pork is essentially kalua pig. Also, I’m driving, so I have veto power.
I pass an off-brand gas station on the corner and pull into the parking lot of a strip mall. It’s old, not as in quaint but as in run down. Imogen twists in her seat to check out the trailers parked across the street and says, “This looks promising.”
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I watch her scrabble in the footwell for her purse. Maybe it’s better to turn around and drive to Ohana, or even back to Modesto’s gentrified downtown, rather than put up with nasty food and Imogen’s whining. Having secured her purse, she snaps back up.
She looks almost expectant.
“What?” she asks.
“What yourself. Are you being snarky? We can go to Ohana if you’re gonna whine all night.”
“No! This looks promising. I mean, look at how many cars there are. Now look at this place. People are not coming here for the ambience.”
She pops out and heads into Dave’s with me on her heels.
The place sports red vinyl benches, some galvanized steel, a bit of chrome, and lots of acoustic ceiling tile. All of which is neither here nor there. What really matters is the way the place smells. Seriously smoky and meaty, with undertones of vinegar: really good.
We study the menu, handwritten on a chalkboard. Given the discussion about kalua pig, the choice is obvious. I step up to the counter to place our order with the server, a friendly Latino guy in a baseball cap and a goatee who turns out to be Dave himself: two pulled pork sandwiches with coleslaw sides.
Imogen grabs me by the upper arm and pipes up over my shoulder. “And an extra side of mac-n-cheese.”
Dave smiles. “No problem.”
Encouraged, Imogen says, “Oh, and also some chili beans.”
“Nooo problem,” says Dave.
“And extra barbecue sauce.”
Grinning now, Dave slides a couple containers of barbecue sauce across the counter while I turn to look at her.
“What? The smells are making me hungry.”
Dave fills a pair of fountain sodas, root beers, for us while we wait. Imogen is the picture of anticipation. She has her extra barbecue sauce clasped in her hands under her chin, like a kid in a candy store. The smell is making my mouth water. I haven’t eaten all day, and my stomach is growling. I wonder if we should have gotten some garlic bread too.
“I thought that was your Tesla.”
I don’t need to turn to recognize Darryl’s lazy, friendly drawl. Christ. With nothing to do but play through, I paste a smile on my face before I turn.
“Hey, Darryl.” I reach out to shake his hand. “Here to get some barbecue?”
“Yup, ribs and some pulled pork,” he affirms.
Darryl’s eyes swing back and forth between me and Imogen. It’s not an inquisitive look; Darryl’s not the nosy type. More like his mama raised him to observe the usual social niceties, and he’s waiting for me to take the lead so he can do his duty.<
br />
“Sorry—Darryl Gniewek, Imogen Sinclair. My friend Imogen.”
Darryl’s hand pops out for a handshake the moment I start speaking, and Darryl and Imogen quickly exhaust the nice-to-meet-yous. That plunges us into the pained, polite smiles/awkward silence portion of the encounter.
“Darryl and I work together at Real Americans PAC,” I explain unhelpfully to Imogen. “Real Americans is running an independent expenditure campaign in Congressional District 10. Mike Reed is defending the seat from Sylvia Delgado.”
Imogen contorts her face into a caricature of polite interest, pretending this is news to her. But her eyes are over-bright. Her whole face is overly expressive, maybe a little desperate, or maybe she’s trying not to laugh. Imogen is either a crap actress or she’s not really trying. Is she trying to out me?
Thankfully, our order is ready. All it takes is an exchange of “Enjoy your dinner” and “Have a good night” to get us out the door and back to the safety of the Tesla.
“That performance is not gonna win you any Oscar nominations,” I say as I back out and get us on the road, completing our escape.
I glance over at her. “I think he thought you were my girlfriend.”
“Well, since you didn’t say, ‘This is my sister, Imogen,’ it does seem unlikely he’d think I was your sister.”
There is a definite edge to her voice.
“Wait, are you pissed I didn’t introduce you as my sister? We agreed before we came out here that I was going undercover—that there was no surer way to out RAPAC as a false flag operation than its funder being mixed race. Anyway, how do you think the Delgado campaign would feel about you being related to RAPAC’s funder?”
“Sylvia knows we don’t get to choose our relatives. Hell, most white progressives have a relative who voted for Trump and are tying themselves in knots trying to square that vote with dear-old-Auntie-Em being such a sweetie.”
“Wait, so you told Delgado?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that without talking to you. Anyway, it hasn’t come up.”
“So why are you pissed? This is what we agreed on.”
“In Modesto, yeah. But it occurs to me that I’ve never met a single one of your work friends in the Bay Area. Why is that, Iz?”
Like most people, my work persona is different from my personal persona. Not a lot different, but different. I keep my work life largely segregated from my private life, and that is especially true of Imogen. It never occurred to me to introduce Imogen to my biotech network. Imogen moves through the world differently than I do. She fights every battle, which is her right, but it has consequences. Like Hank and Irene Whitman, my network wouldn’t know what to make of Imogen. They would find her too politically opinionated, too hard a partier, too potty-mouthed.
“Do you know what Silicon Valley tech guys are like? Do you think you’d actually enjoy meeting them?”
“So you’re just thinking of my feelings, that it? And your biotech bros already know you’re mixed race?”
“It hasn’t come up.”
That stops her dead. She’s chewing over it, trying to find a way to press the point without looking like a hypocrite and not finding one.
“Anyway, it’s good that Darryl thinks you’re my girlfriend, right?”
“How is it good?
“He seemed fine with me dating a mixed-race woman. Like that social science you were quoting, that opposition to interracial marriage is a proxy for racism. It means Darryl’s not racist.”
Imogen twists herself in her seat so that she can stare straight at me.
“You said I was your ‘friend,’ not your wife, Iz.”
“Yeah, but I think he thought we were dating. Don’t you?”
“Iz. That’s not proof he’s not racist. Here in the USA, light-skinned men have always felt entitled to sex with dark-skinned women. Do you think Thomas Jefferson’s neighbors were troubled that he was having his way with Sally Hemings? Rape was one of the benefits of slave ownership. And let me tell you, as a brown-skinned woman navigating the dating scene in 2018 in San Francisco, a lot of white guys still think they’re entitled to some strange.”
She flops back into her seat, staring out the windshield. “Now when Darryl’s daughter Riley comes home from college knocked up by a big, beautiful, black buck of a man, and Darryl welcomes that man into the family with open arms? That might tell us something. ’Til then? Grow up, Iz.”
Nothing is ever enough for Imogen.
Except, perhaps, Dave’s barbecue. Which is quite good, and we finish every bite of it. Next time I’m definitely trying the garlic bread.
24
Arithmetic and Obamacare
Saturday, September 29th, 38 days until the midterms
“Jesus Christ!”
I need to learn to shut the door before making calls when Corey or Darryl are in the office. I wrap up with the compliance manager and hang up. From my office doorway, I watch RAPAC’s usually unflappable assistant treasurer pace around the bullpen.
“What’s going on, Darryl?”
“Dad’s drug treatment clinic in Toledo closed.” Darryl doesn’t stop pacing to answer me. “It just closed—no notice. Folks with real insurance got transferred to a clinic in Cleveland. Folks with Obamacare, who needed the federally subsidized payments? They’re just out on the street.”
“Your dad’s a drug addict?” asks Corey from the doorway of the conference room. He’s leaning against the doorjamb, eating a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, his eyes bright with interest as they follow Darryl on his circuit around the room.
Darryl pulls up in front of Corey and says, “His doctor prescribed OxyContin after he took a spill off the neighbor’s roof.”
Maybe Darryl senses less than full support from Corey because he continues, a tad defensively, “He was doing a good deed, helping an older lady clean out the gutters. His back got messed up and none of the physical therapy helped. His doctor kept upping the dosage. He trusted his doctor.”
Corey looks skeptical.
“That sounds really awful, Darryl,” I say, and Darryl turns towards me. “Toledo’s a good-size town. There must be other treatment centers there.”
“There are other centers, but Dad’s not eligible for lots of them—like there are ones that are only for vets, or only if you’ve been arrested. It’s easier to get treatment if you’re a criminal than a decent guy like my dad. Pathway Health was specifically opened because of the opioid epidemic and it offers Suboxone to help people get off opioids.”
“Wait, so you take one drug instead of another drug?” Corey doesn’t like being excluded from a conversation.
“It sounds weird, but it really works—more people get off the opioids,” says Darryl, rubbing his hands over his face.
Corey snorts, which snaps Darryl around to face Corey.
“I’m not going to debate my dad’s treatment with you, Corey—you’re not a doctor. The point is, the clinic manager told Dad that all the Obamacare repeal shenanigans made premiums go way up. So many patients lost coverage that Dad’s clinic was forced to close.”15,16,17
“Your dad’s addicted, and you’re blaming the Great DJT?” Corey is incredulous.
Darryl’s not having it. He comes right back at Corey.
“Trump promised ‘We’re going to have insurance for everybody,’ that it would be a ‘lot less expensive.’18 He said he could keep the pre-existing condition protection and get rid of the individual mandate.19 He said it on CNN, in the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. This isn’t better! This isn’t ‘less expensive’ ‘insurance for everybody’!”
“Your dad didn’t do anything wrong—he trusted doctors.” Corey’s voice is flat. “You didn’t have anything to do with Trump gutting Obamacare—you trusted Trump.”
Darryl stares at Corey, who strolls into the bullpen, takes a seat at one of the desks, and spins so that he’s facing Darryl, crunching on another Dorito.
“That is rich, really rich,” says
Corey. “Let’s see. What did you say again? That we could get rid of the individual mandate—that’s the requirement that everyone has health insurance—and at the same time we could keep pre-existing condition protection. Is that right, Darryl?”
“That’s what I said.”
“What do you have to believe to believe we can trash the individual mandate but keep pre-existing condition protection? Do you know how insurance works, Darryl? Not just health insurance, but any kind of insurance?”
Corey’s voice has a veneer of friendliness, like when he was talking about Darryl’s daughter Riley being a looker. Darryl looks wary.
“Maybe it’s helpful if we do a quick refresher.”
Corey’s voice morphs. It’s pitched higher, like he’s a grade school teacher with a special needs class during story time.
“Once upon a time, a thousand people worried about a tree falling on their houses in a storm. They knew the odds of a tree falling weren’t that high, but that if a tree did fall on the house, it would do thousands in damage. The people went to an insurer, and the insurer charged them each $50 a year to insure against tree-fall risk. That winter, there was a big storm and a tree fell on one of the homes!”
Corey’s story time imitation is fascinating and repulsive.
“The repair bill was a whopping $10,000. Happily, the person had insurance! And the insurer had collected $50 in premiums for 1,000 people, for a total of $50,000. The insurer promptly paid for the repairs and still had $40,000 to pay operating costs and make a healthy profit. Everyone lived happily ever after.”
Corey’s voice returns to its normal, slightly snarky tone. “Insurance is basically just risk sharing. The key here is ‘sharing.’ Are you with me here, Darryl?”
Darryl doesn’t like Corey’s little story time, who would? But his Modesto-nice upbringing requires a response. He gives Corey the smallest of nods.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” says Corey. “Now, you say Donald Trump promised he would get rid of the requirement that everyone have health insurance, while at the same time keeping the pre-existing condition protection, and evidently, you believed him, Darryl.”
Rules of Resistance Page 9
