The Racist Conspiracy Theorist…

April 3, 2008 | 8:47 AM

A few weeks ago, I was out with some friends talking to people in the neighborhood around the church and we met an African American guy whose mother’s home we’d gutted after Katrina.  It was a unique encounter in that he asked us bluntly what good we were doing in New Orleans (ignoring the fact that we gutted the home he was living in, but that his mom was not).  He suggested that we weren’t doing anything and that we should be protesting on behalf of all the homeless living underneath Claiborne Avenue.  In that conversation he told us all about how the white man blew up the levees to keep blacks out of New Orleans.  During the entire conversation, that guy made an effort to make us look like we were terrible people simply because we were born white.

This was not my first experience with racism in New Orleans- since I moved here in 2004 I’ve been discriminated against because I’m white.  The first time it happened I was blown away- but quickly got over it.  It’s obvious that racial tension is a problem in the city anyway [see Jordan, Eddie].

Yesterday I had a new experience with racism… and with conspiracy theories.  While I was at a store in Metairie, one of the shop employees (from Indiana) and I struck up a conversation.  It went like this.  I was buying a space pen (thanks, Adam) and the guy mentioned that the box looked like the moon with craters.  Then he told me that we faked the moon landing.  I’ve heard this insane theory before, but never from someone in real life.  I said that was as crazy as the guy who told me that by being white, I unknowingly participated in blowing the levees (I was in Alabama with my family for Katrina, so, sorry!).  The employee took off with that story- and immediately launched into a racial diatribe about how African-Americans were lazy and we’d created a monster out of them with welfare and many other social programs.  I brought up good African-Americans that weren’t remotely like that: Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama as good examples.

Now, this guy wasn’t a Bush fan, but he really didn’t like Obama (or Jeremiah Wright, especially).  So I got us off that topic quickly, and he continued with his rant against African-Americans.  After a few minutes it started getting uglier, and he threw out at least four or five “nigger” comments.  (For some reason, each one of those words was like I was being punched in the stomach.)  During that portion of the conversation, I wondered if this guy owned the shop and whether I should purchase the merchandise or if I should just walk out.  I stayed, and we continued talking about things.  Among the other things he said:

• Jeremiah Wright was correct on one point.  The employee claimed that AIDS was a manufactured virus to kill all homosexuals and blacks, but of course, he came up with that theory 20 years ago.
• He liked “the culture of Africa”.  When I asked which one, he said “the African one.”  I pushed further, explaining that there were many cultures in Africa.  He stuttered out a brief, “like Zimbabwe and those places.”
• Apparently Osama bin Laden hates America for only one real reason: the US bombed Japan with nuclear weapons to end World War II.
• By the way, the first people/culture to get nuclear power from the US was… wait for it… Africa.  When I asked where and which people, he said “Africa!”  I replied, “maybe South Africa, which was ruled by white people, but that’s the only country in Africa to have ever been nuclear that I know of.”

By this point I had to get out of the place, not because I was in a conversation with a nutjob, but because I had class and needed to drive back to campus.  So that’s my encounter from yesterday.  I think this city just attracts people who are slightly “off.”  I guess it makes things more interesting.

Posted in Life, New Orleans