They were still the first few arrivals to class, and Eric decided Professor Finlay's desk was better suited for his ass than the desk he had picked out in the back. He plopped into the instructor's chair, and barked orders at students as they walked in the door.
Spit out your gum.
No outside drinks in my class.
If I catch you on your phone again, you're out of my class.
He grinned in triumph when a timid freshman blushed and retreated to the back to spit out her gum. Others, who were more familiar with Eric's antics, eyed him like a cockroach and ignored him.
When he got bored barking orders, he spun his chair around to the white board again where the nameless guy had drawn some kind of geometric model with letters and numeric formulas.
"I'm sorry, you were saying?" Eric interrupted him.
"Why move here of all places? Why not somewhere closer to home?" the nameless guy asked more specifically. "Don't they have other colleges besides the one in Denver?"
"I had no choice," Eric answered, but anticipating the nameless guy's next question, he added, "It was a last minute decision, like I said. Denver got old and I wanted a change in scenery. I got accepted into Yale next Fall, and after I got that letter, I lost interest in Denver. I still had a whole semester before I could go to Yale though, so instead of waiting it out, I figured I'd get out and see places before I threw myself into the ivy leagues. I could've gotten into a decent private college in the meantime, but I decided to kick back this semester. I didn't want to work too hard, so I applied to this college instead because it was easy to get in. They let anybody in here. State colleges are a joke. You're wasting your money."
The room began buzzing with conversation as more students filed in, but Eric had lost interest in them now that the subject of the conversation had turned to himself.
"Maybe for some majors, it's easy to get in, ya," the nameless guy agreed. "But as far as other stuff, you can't get in. And you can forget about the Honors program here. You got kids from around here applying to get in and then you got all the rest of the world trying to get a piece. It's not as easy as it looks. The classes are more rigorous. You got to be a computer to keep up with the professors. And you never get laid. Ever. You must have been crazy mad smart to get into the honors program here."
"It's not hard," Eric told him. "Not everyone can do it, but you could've if you really wanted to. That kind of stuff should come naturally to you. Those classes were designed for people like us. People who have the capacity to think critically and do something with it. It's in our blood. We were always meant to lead the rest of the world. But honestly, if you want my opinion, don't waste your time with honors here. Unfortunately, when you get so many outsiders coming into that program clogging up the system, the value goes down. You have to dumb down the material for people who came to this country without learning English. You spend more time accommodating somebody else's third world culture than you do actually learning something. Maybe in the past it would've been worth it, but nowadays an honors program at a state college is worth as much as getting honor roll in the 4th grade. It just isn't enough to keep serious employers from tossing your resume back into the oblivion pile. If you're going to throw your money at something, invest in a college that actually has some influence behind its name. I've got some people you might be able to talk to if you're interested."
The nameless guy laughed. "Thanks, dude, but when they find out I make less than 25,000 a year, I'm going to hear a dial tone," he replied. "There's nothing wrong with the honors program here though. I know a few people who are doing it and they've already got job offers lined up before graduation."
"Well somebody's got to make sure the coffee's hot in the morning," Eric chuckled. "The rest of the people in that office are too busy actually running the business and maintaining this country's economy. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wanting to take on a challenge academically, but focus that energy into something tangible like personal projects and research. If I were an employer, I'd care less that you got an A in Macroeconomics, and more about the fact that you came up with a list of tested concrete solutions to increase my profitability index."
"On top of getting a degree and working full time? You're crazy, man. I don't have time for that."
"Well it's a good thing people before us have done it, or you'd be another poverty statistic," Eric told him. "I've seen guys make it without actually doing any work. All they had to do was make an appearance or write down a last name, and they streamlined through the application process. Either way you go, you're getting ahead. Genes are a meal ticket, and once you recognize the full potential of that, it'll be a lot easier for you to make twice as much as you're making now. I'm talking bare minimum, at least 50,000 entry level. You just got to be more confident. The longer you hang around places like this, the more it taints your image. These people don't know what they're doing. They think the American dream is about buying a house in a neighborhood they've never lived in, owning a car they can't afford, and popping out a couple of kids they can't put through college. They've never lived it, and they're perspective of it is so limited that they can't possibly know what they're looking for. They'll give up looking eventually and start sucking the system dry to pay for their bad decisions, which is why it's up to us to keep them under control and maintain order in society."
The nameless guy chuckled. "I love how you so obviously hate poor people. Seriously, dude, it takes time for somebody who started out with nothing to make it in this country. A house and a couple of kids might not seem like much to you, but to other people, that's an accomplishment."
"I don't have anything against people who start out with nothing. We need people like that. Someone's got to be poor in order for someone else to be wealthy. That's the basis of economics," Eric said. "I know the poor are necessary, but I don't lose sleep over worrying about what's happening to them. People are born into different levels of society for a reason. I don't need to do anything to help the poor, because if they don't help themselves, an urbanized form of natural selection will get rid of them anyway. Nature has always favored the strong, pure-blooded, and superior in this country. We have an enormously greater chance of surviving in this society than people outside that demographic."
"So basically what you're saying is you're smarter and better than all of us because you're white?” a voice remarked from a middle seat in the classroom.
The room hushed. The nameless guy looked over his shoulder and Eric coolly scanned the desks for the anonymous heckler. A black girl glared back at him from behind her compact mirror. At least, he thought she was black. Her complexion was a warm sepia brown but after noting the prominent shape of her defiant eyes, finely colored with shades of amber, it was hard to tell what race they belonged to. Yet whether they were brown or blue made no difference. They challenged him with a confidence comparable to his own arrogance, never faltering in intensity or apologizing for their intrusion.
When it was determined that his sardonic grin would not force her to retreat, he decided to oblige her with an answer. "Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying."
"Why not just say that then?" she asked. "You're a racist. You support white supremacy. If it's that important to you, why not drop all the fancy jargon and say it out loud in one coherent sentence so every person in this room can hear you?"
Eric glanced around at the 30-something pairs of eyes that were now on him. The room was dead quiet, and Professor Finlay, who had walked in just minutes before, did nothing to regain the attention of his class. Nothing would save Eric from the challenge which had been offered to him.
"Oh, I see," the black girl remarked, after minutes of silence. "Apparently superiority isn't everything."
She closed her compact mirror after fixing her lip gloss and continued writing down notes from her textbook, as if Eric had never existed in that room. Eric scanned the room again, noting every expression of contempt and ridicule reflected back on him. He
smiled again, an attempt to distract the attention from his reddening face, but the longer people stared at him, the more infuriated he became.
"Nobody can say anything around you people without someone calling you racist," he said finally.
The black girl patiently lifted her eyes from her textbook and granted him her attention, but not as an equal. She looked at him as if he were a child who had disturbed her intellectual train of thought to show her something trivial. Eric noted the gesture, and he wished he could hit her in her fat lip.
"I make a statement that's totally honest and supported by evidence, but since you people get your feelings hurt over just about anything, fact and truth is now a hate crime and racism,” he argued.
"All I asked is that you stop beating around the bush and publicly stand by what you believe in, if you believe that. If you're a racist, fine. You're entitled to believe what you want to believe, but I'll respect you more if you say it to my face rather than talk behind my back," she said.
"Yes," Eric said firmly. "White people run this country, therefore if I had to pick a side, I'd go white."
"And by white, you mean light skin, without any consideration for other factors like education, occupation, or even a person's moral code?” she asked.
"White is the only factor."
"Clearly, I'm dark skinned, but both my parents are white," she told him. "What does that make me?"
"It would be inappropriate for me to use that word in public," Eric told her. "But I can tell you what it makes your mother. A liar and a whore."
"Better a ‘whore’ than an ignorant bigot," she replied. "Luckily for the rest of humanity, there's not that many of you around here. Do us a favor. Go back to the backwoods and stay there."
Eric grinned only broader, and slipped off the professor's desk. He casually strolled over to where she was sitting. He squinted at her as he knelt before her desk, boldly resting his elbows on top. He looked her straight in the eyes, talking so low that only she could hear him. "I'm out of the backwoods now, sweetheart, and I'm not going anywhere. I can't stand the sight or smell of you, so here's how it's going to be. You're going to pack up your little bag there and you're going to leave this room and never come back. I don't ever want to see you again or there’ll be trouble between us. Understand?"
She smiled at him, and no matter how much he hated to admit it, it wasn't an ugly smile. "You're delusional," she said. "It's a shame your superior genes didn't save you enough of the common sense gland when they were overloading on the asshole trait."
"I'm sorry, what was that?"
"I called you an asshole," she said. "A.S.S.H.O.L.E. Google it."
Eric laughed and shook his head. "You might be right about that," he said. "But if you think you're going to get through this class, you're in over your head. You don't belong here, nigger."
"Excuse me?" She blinked at him.
He grinned from ear to ear as every eye now turned in her direction. Her cheeks burned, and she avoided looking into the eyes of her classmates as they all awaited her reply. Her hand tightened around her pen, the blood rushing from her knuckles as she squeezed it hard. Clearly, she had never been talked to that way before and certainly never called by that name. It caught her off guard. This wasn't a situation she normally got herself into. She could do one of two things, Eric thought to himself. She could run or she could "go black" on him. Either route would eventually prove his point. Eric had no doubt about that.
"I paid for this class just like everyone else," she said finally. Her voice now quiet enough for his ears only. She wanted so badly not to make a scene, and he would do anything he had to in order to take advantage of that. He was wild with victory when he recognized the conversation was embarrassing her, and he charged on to crush her once and for all.
"Nope, wrong again," he declared so the whole room could hear. "Tax payers wasted their money so you could get in this class. Maybe if tax payers had more control over what happens to their money, they'd have realized that financial aid is another bullshit form of welfare for poor mud-blood people like you. If you people can't get off your lazy asses and earn a paycheck like any normal person, instead of relying on us to take care of you, then what makes you think you'll survive this class? What makes you think you'll survive out there in the real world without the government giving you handouts? How can I respect somebody like you when I have to work my ass off for your welfare check? Do us a favor. Walk away. Do something good in society for once and stop wasting our time and money."
"Thank you, sir," Professor Finlay said to him. "What did you say your name was?"
"Eric Chandler," he said proudly, then glanced back at the girl. “And you'll never forget it."
"I'm sure we won't," Professor Finlay replied, noting the name down. "You're dismissed from my class, Mr. Chandler."
"For what?" Eric demanded.
"For being disruptive."
"I didn't do anything wrong. I was minding my own business when she confronted me."
"Leave my class now or I'll have someone escort you out, under which case you will be permanently ejected from this course and suspended from the university," Professor Finlay warned. "The choice is yours."
With a 32-person vote against him, he had no choice but to comply. He pushed himself away from the girl's desk so roughly that her textbook slid off the table onto the floor. He then marched out of the class, leaving the sooty imprint of his boot on the crumpled pages of her book.
Obsession
It wasn't racist to him.
In fact, he didn't even believe in racism. To him, such an ideology didn't really exist, except when the minority races used it as a weapon against whites to get handouts, get away with crime, or blame white people for all their problems. If anything, he believed it was his own race that suffered from racial prejudice. It was never right to discriminate against someone based purely off the color of their skin and he stood by that idea. Skin color was an uncontrollable biological factor. Just as he had no say in being born white, he understood that others had no choice when born black, brown, red, or yellow. It was nature's way of using diversity to keep the world spinning. Therefore, it wasn't skin color that he based his politics on.
What he did believe in was racial hierarchy. That made more sense to him. He only needed to look at the history of slavery to tell him that. How could the African race have lacked so much power that they allowed themselves to be enslaved by Whites, while other races had escaped the same fate? Racial hierarchy, he would answer. Black people were the inferior race. That was fact to him.
It was fact that he hadn't seen enough black CEO's, or world leaders, or lawyers, or doctors, or college graduates. It was fact that every time he turned on the radio or TV, the media reminded him that it was a black person he needed to protect himself from. It was fact that everything he had been told about black people had been justified one way or another. He was only echoing what he'd always been taught in the past, or reflecting on his own interpretations and experiences.
It was all based on fact backed up by centuries of scientific research in leading disciplines such as psychology, evolutionary biology, sociology, craniology, and countless others. Furthermore, back home he could pull any educated and respectable person off the street and they would give him the same answer; Black people are the fear, burden, and responsibility of Whites in society.
That was the philosophy of his own core beliefs, and they were a set of principles that he had always assumed would apply anywhere in any place in the world. Or, at least, while he remained in the secure and privileged bubble surrounding his overwhelmingly white hometown.
Yet outside his remote suburb, and his merrily conservative circle, the world was a stranger. He didn't understand it. It was an alien world where women like Chantel Pari scored higher than him in subjects that had previously been dominated by white men.
A black woman had outdone him, and not just any black woman, but a mulatto (he soon come to discover) an
d that was much worse. At least a black woman untainted by other races could maintain her dignity knowing that her parents had chosen to avoid the conflict of interracial mingling, and thus, spared her the ongoing conflict of racial identity. A mulatto, on the other hand, could not completely fit into one world or the other, leaving her in this dead space outside of two societies. Furthermore, black and white interracially mixed children had always made him cringe. Their faces seemed always in conflict with the intrusive exaggerated features of the negro merging with the graceful, softer features of the Caucasian. The end result was the mulatto, who to him appeared more like a sick deformed puppy than an exotic beauty experiment. It was like crossing a donkey with a horse and getting a mule. It just didn’t seem to fit to him.
On all accounts, Chantel Pari had turned that stereotype onto its head, tipping his world into chaos.
It wasn't just Chantel Pari that defied his expectations. All across campus there were plenty of examples of accomplished colored girls who set the standards high, and they were revered as smart, sexy, and desirable. He often brushed these girls off as an exception to the rule, a stroke of luck, or an unusual mutation like those born with six fingers or three nipples.
After all, California had always been the black sheep of the U.S. run by hippies and freaks of every kind. Everyone smiled too much. Everyone was too damn nice. Everyone was too damn obsessed with other people's feelings, and sugar-coated everything. Everyone wanted to be like everyone else. A distinguished gentleman, like himself, carrying a spotless pedigree was squeezed into the same category as gays, niggers, cripples and white trash lowlifes all for the sake of equality. If anybody was asking his humble opinion, the state had downgraded itself from a golden paradise to the trash dump of the rest of the country. The “Golden State” was tarnished.
Yet, no one seemed bothered by it. No one found it threatening, or emasculating, or anything unnatural.
Grey Page 2
