Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Communicating With Assholes: The Story of the Four-Star Racist

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Self-styled genteel white Americans like myself like to think that racism is subtle, now a quarter of the way through the 21st century.

Racism is “institutional,” it’s “systemic,” it’s “implicit.”

Every once in awhile, you get a stiff sip of the old-fashioned stuff.

At least, if you live in Chicago, you do.

In a way, it’s almost refreshing—something you can react to, for once.

Got one not too long ago, from an Uber driver who took me to O’Hare, for a business trip.

We hit it off right away, when he complained in his South Side Chicago accent about his last customer, who gave him a four-star review after what he considered a perfect ride. He said it was typical, that lots of customers give four-star reviews, because they don’t “believe in” giving five-star reviews. He said four-star reviews hurt his standing with Uber. He gets dinged, somehow, and it costs him money.

I launched into a sympathetic sweary rant about the sorts of professional customers who appoint themselves white-glove inspectors of every fucking service they receive, and what self-important, clueless asses they are. I wasn’t just trying to curry favor with the guy. This is a longstanding complaint of mine, and I believe employers who embrace the “customer is always right” philosophy wind up turning their employees into slaves of the stupid and the spiteful.

And this is how it usually begins. A Northwest Side, Southwest Side or Southside Chicago racist (two can play the stereotyping game) encounters a non-working class Northsider who seems to his astonishment not to be a bad guy. And this cognitive dissonance itch needs urgent scratching. The guy has to know: Is it possible that there is actually a regular guy who lives on the north side and takes Ubers to the airport? Or is this just a rare homosexual libtard Cub fan who knows how to talk to regular people?

And this is the part that’s hard to render here, because it actually is subtle. Ingeniously and smelling his way with his tongue, the Uber driver (or the bar regular or the paired-up golf partner) finds a topic of conversation three degrees away from “neighborhoods,” say. Or the mayor, who happens to be Black. Or the latest crime statistics. The guy doesn’t go right into the fraught topic. He sidles up to it, a tenth of a mile at a time. Until, by the time you’re pulling off on I-190 into the airport, he’s dismissing certain populations as ignorant or worse, and checking your eyebrows, in the rearview.

Having endured a few dozen of these kinds of conversations in my 34 years of living in Chicago, I can sense them coming a long way off, like a vibration on a rail. At various stages of their approach, I’ve yelled at guys, I’ve set traps for guys and I’ve gently poked guys in their eyes. Like the golfer/ComEd meter reader who was talking about how shitty all the people are on the West Side and I shrugged and told him maybe I see them differently because my schoolteacher wife works with their little kids, who don’t seem shitty to me.

I’m also sure I’ve let some of these guys off the hook entirely, knowing I wasn’t going to change them and just wanting to get onto the next thing. (And these are all guys, by the way; I know there are racist women in Chicago, but none has ever played this game with me; they seem content to let Northsiders be.)

With this Uber guy, I knew what to do by the time we approached Terminal 1. I didn’t say a mumbling word in the last minutes, just nodded and uh-huh-huh-ed and oh-boyed, until he dropped me at the curb. I thanked him for the ride, I told him to have a great day, I paid a 20% tip, and I rated my experience.

Ohio Book Tour Diary: Soccer Dad Goes Home

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Last week I went to Northeast Ohio where I grew up, to give a couple of book talks for Soccer Dad. At the end of the week I sent a triumphant note to my publisher Disruption Books, who replied saying they’re “very happy with the sales and effort.”

Not half as happy as I am. Here was my week:

Tuesday

Today I drove from Chicago to a hotel in Streetsboro, Ohio, where one of the old Ohio University soccer dads picked me up and squired me to a restaurant in the neighboring town of Hudson, Ohio, where I grew up. There, after a happy hour with a few Hudson soccer dads and coaches, I delivered a book talk at the Hudson Library & Historical Society, where I learned to read.

The event was sponsored by The Learned Owl Book Shop; my central memory of this place is sitting on the floor as a child, waiting for my mother to pick out the latest from Marilyn French, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Joan Didion.

The packed room included one of my best friends growing up, and another high school classmate who I hadn’t seen since we graduated in 1987. I spoke about my parents, both authors of books that appeared on the shelves of The Learned Owl 50 years ago, and I read from their work in addition to reading from mine. I signed books afterward, including six copies that The Learned Owl placed on their “Hudson author” shelf. Afterward, a nightcap at Kepner’s Tavern, a warm Main Street bar that I never saw the inside of growing up because my dad thought it, like all drinking establishments, a “den of iniquity.”

Wednesday

After a leisurely breakfast at Yours Truly, kind of a gourmet greasy spoon that’s only gotten better since I ate there as a kid, I drove to Akron to play golf at Chenoweth Golf Course, with one of the early heroes in my life—my high school history teacher, Rob Yanko. Rob, as my 57-year-old self struggles to call him with a straight face, only retired earlier this year. I wasn’t the only student who loved him.

I’d used Soccer Dad as an excuse to get in touch with him. You see, Mr. Yanko was also the Hudson High golf coach, and in a chapter that briefly chronicles my own ignominious youth sports career, I note that he cut me from the golf team four years in a row—the last year, laughing when I entered the clubhouse. After reading Soccer Dad, Mr. Yanko agreed that “it is time for me to reassess your game.” We played 18 holes today. The 85-year-old whipped me by about 15 strokes. I asked if I could try out again next year; he took it under advisement.

It was something else to feel 17 years old for a whole day: curious to get to know a fine man as an adult, and meanwhile so eager to show my old teacher that I’d lived a life worthy of the education he helped to give me. (And worthy of the worthy life he has lived himself.)

Afterward, Rob and his wife Mary hosted a happy hour and a rollicking dinner with another beloved teacher from high school, the sociology teacher and the taker of my senior picture, Jim Roetzel. (Jim is an exquisite photographer and a deeply funny and wise man.) In our revelry, we all forgot to take a photo. But I hope Jim caught a glimpse of this kid who he saw so well 40 years ago.

Thursday

Woke up this morning in a boathouse at Clifton Lagoon in Cleveland, the home of my college pal Tom Gillespie, who had arranged another book talk for tonight, at the West End Tavern, which Tom owns. Tom’s a developer who conserves old buildings by converting them for new uses—and we spent the day on the bum, visiting various projects in his 1967 Mustang convertible. I drove.

Then it was on to the show at the West End—another packed house, this one louder and with a few customers who were not on their first drink. That made for a lively book talk, thankfully moderated by Tom and Pete Carroll, a youth-sports-wise and room-commanding friend of ours. The room got very quiet when I spontaneously closed the talk with a slightly tearful reading of a long text I sent to Scout when she was struggling with college soccer. And then roared with laughter and applause, at Scout’s one-line reply, that serves as the ending of the book.

Afterward, there was an emotional reunion with one of Scout’s dearest teammate/sisters from OU, and lots of good and eager talk with some sports dads in attendance. At one point, a basketball dad fondly remembered driving to tournaments with his teenage sons; he showed me pictures he’d taken of them sleeping in the backseat. I advised him to make one of these, for them.

As was the case at The Learned Owl—and partly thanks to some aggressive last-minute sales efforts by Tom and Pete—the Shaker Heights bookstore Loganberry Books sold all the copies they brought to this event. And afterwards, the co-hosts were happy.

Friday

I can say from a position of authority: A good way to wash off a celebratory evening that ended at 3:30 a.m. (or was it more like 4:00?) … is to ride a Triumph motorcycle fast and curvy on a sunny day, down through the Cleveland Metro Parks to Peninsula, Ohio, for a burger and a beer—and then tear back up through the Cleveland National Forest until you find yourself suddenly waiting for a train in the middle of a steel mill in The Flats—a train whose tanker cars contain molten steel whose heat radiates from an open hatch on top.

You’ll want to top that off with dinner at the White Oaks Restaurant, a 1920s speakeasy, in the forest beside a creek. You’ll also want to call it a weekend on Saturday, in time to get home and revel in what must have been one of the very best weeks of a life that’s contained a lot of good ones.

My deepest thanks to everyone who played a part, starting with my late parents.