I live in a multicultural community. There are white families, Asian families, Hispanic families, and black families. Everyone gets along. Except for one guy.
He rents a house in the neighborhood. The owner of the house, an ex-military white guy, used to live there and was really nice.
He was originally from Louisiana, and shortly after he moved in he had a crab boil for the neighbors. He quickly made friends and we all liked him.
Then he got married, they started a family, and he moved out. He rented the house to a guy who is, frankly, weird and has managed to alienate all the neighbors.
One of my fellow brown neighbors suspects the guy is a racist. I originally thought he was just a jerk, because he’s yelled at white people as well as those of other races.
That’s right. He yells at people. For parking in front of his house. Which is street parking. So it’s perfectly legal. In fact, he put up a street cone to save his spot at one point, which is actually illegal. He stole it from a nearby construction site.
The guy has also done other things to aggravate the neighbors.
I heard the latest on him when some neighbors came by to give my mother some cookies.
What started as friendly conversation devolved into a venting session because this guy had recently insulted one lady’s son.
So another lady mentioned that the bad neighbor kept using her trash bin. She asked him politely to get her permission if he needed to use her bin but he ignored her and continued to dump stuff into her bin without asking.
So finally she’d had enough. She gathered the trash from her bin and dumped it on his porch. Then he stopped.
He’s also been rude to an elderly black woman who goes for daily walks. She smiles and says hello to everyone she passes. All the other neighbors smile back and some will stop and chat with her briefly.
The jerk neighbor ignores her. He looks right through her.
He continued to do this even after she baked brownies and dropped off cellophane wrapped treats for the people in the cul-de-sac.
He was also caught spying on another neighbor’s barbecue. Not to see if he could come over and join them, perhaps bring the beer. That would have been welcome. But he’s never made any attempt at befriending anyone.
In fact, he called the cops on a neighbor having a party. The party was not that loud, but one of the attendees made the mistake of parking too close to the guy’s house. So he called the cops.
The person whose car it was pointed out to the cops that it’s legal to park in the street. The cop said that the person was right, but to keep the peace, it might be a good idea to move the vehicle.
Probably the cop picked up on the fact that this neighbor has a screw loose.
One of my Muslim neighbors told us something he’d said to her son which made the case that he was a racist.
Instead of stewing, however, we started joking about how we’d get back at him. I suggested she get her imam to have the call to prayers at her house, using a really loud speaker.
“If he’s really a racist,” I pointed out. “That will get his goat.”
She loved the idea and rolled over laughing. She asked me if my Mom could blast her Bollywood. More suggestions were made, more laughter ensued.
Of course, we are not going to actually implement any of these suggestions. They were just a way for us to let off steam. We are just going to do our best to ignore him.
Everyone else in the neighborhood gets along. So I guess, all things considered, we are actually very lucky. We only have the one bad seed.
I am fighting stage IV cancer. If you can help with medical bills, I would really appreciate it. Or if you enjoy my writing and would like to buy me a cup of coffee, that’s great too. Maybe someday I can return the favor.
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This post was previously published on Shefali O’Hara’s blog.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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