A white woman hears a black co-worker complain about stomach problems, which his doctor says are aggravated by stress. She offers him a guided relaxation tape to help reduce his stress level. A few days later he returns the tape to the woman and thanks her. The following dialogue takes place.

Her:   How did you like the tape?
Him:  I couldn’t stand that guy’s voice.
Her:   Really? But he’s black!
Him:  I don’t care what color he is! I didn’t like it.

Commentary to African American Vignette #3

The white woman seems to be assuming that her black co-worker will relate positively to the voice on the tape merely because it is that of a black person. Let’s see how it sounds if the situation is reversed: a black man gives a different relaxation tape to his white female co-worker.

Him:  How did you like the tape?
Her:   I couldn’t stand that guy’s voice.
Him:  Really? But he’s white!

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes on this issue: “ (There is) a resentment at being lumped together with thirty million African Americans whom you don’t know, most of whom you will never know. Completely by the accident of racism, we have been bound together with people with whom we may or may not have something in common, just because we are “black.” Thirty million Americans are black, and thirty million are a lot of people. One day you wonder: What do the misdeeds of a Mike Tyson have to do with me? Why do I feel implicated? And how can I not feel racial recrimination when I can feel racial pride?”

(Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Colored People: A Memoir from Colored People, copyright 1994, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.)

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