The World Record Book of Racist Stories

**approaches podium in a super-fancy ball gown**

Welcome to the World Record Book of Racist Stories Awards! We are going to be awarding some prestigious titles tonight to people who have really earned them. Now, what is a racist? Is it just a confused person who means well but blah, blah, blah? No. A racist is a turd.

Ooh! Quick sidenote: We will not be explaining shit in this book. So, if you want to know why we did what we did or if you want someone to explain what racism is, I cannot help you.

Ooh! Side sidenote: Some of you, as you read this book, will want us to lament about how sad it is being in this cruel world, and you’ll want to see some of that trauma porn-ish Black pain, but I’m sorry to report, reading this book will leave you unsatisfied.

Our esteemed judges, Mommy, Daddy, Chrystal, Angie, Lacey, Jimmy, and Amber have searched their memories to bring you the best of the best. These racists we’re honoring tonight have really applied themselves to their crafts. They’ve spent years preparing for these interactions. They’re excellent at racism. As they would say about us, it’s in their blood. First up, our award for:

Least “All Black People Look Alike”

I was once pulled over while entering a ramp to the interstate. There was no reason for me to be pulled over. I had done everything right. I was going under the speed limit. My tags were good. We all know why I’m being pulled over. It was the middle of the day. So, I was immediately less scared than normal. The cop approaches the car. Now, we both know he’s pulled me over for no reason. The trick here is sussing out whether he pulled me over because he’s angry and racist or just racist. The way he started talking to me let me know he’s pretty chill. As a result, I mustered up the courage to ask the officer why I was being pulled over. Now, that sounds like nothing, but the amount of courage it takes to ask an officer WHY you’re being pulled over is the same amount it takes to fight a bear because that shit could have the same result. I knew there was no excuse and that he probably wouldn’t shoot me in broad daylight. So, I ask him and his reply is, “We are just doing some checks in the area.”

What the hell is he checking on? Checking to see if my rights are still intact? THEY’RE NOT! Also, is this even a thing officers say?

Anyway, this guy asks me for my license and registration. I give him both. He immediately looks at my license and says, “This doesn’t even look like you.” I can’t begin to explain to you how this picture looked EXACTLY like me. I know what you’re thinking: Your hair was different. Nope! It was exactly the same. The license was old. Nope. I had just gotten the license a few weeks before the stop. I tell him, “Actually, I just got this license a few weeks ago, and it couldn’t look more like me.” He gives me a sarcastic laugh and “No it doesn’t!” Now, some days you have common sense but this was not me on this day. Instead of being quiet and respectful I say back to him, “Yes it does.” I don’t know where I got the bravery from but as he walks away he yells back, “NO IT DOESN’T!” So I yell back even louder, “YES IT DOES!” After about ten minutes he comes back to my car and says all of my information checks out, and I can go. As he hands my license back to me he says, “This picture still doesn’t look anything like you.” I say back to him, “Yes it does, it looks just exactly like me.” This is coming from a white police officer who works in a Black neighborhood, and he can’t tell if a Black woman looks like the picture she presents to him? How can he be sure he’s got the right suspect if he can’t match a picture with a face?! What the hell will this man do if he accidentally stumbles upon a missing child? Carry around the milk carton with him to prove to her she’s not the one who is missing? Poor hypothetical child.

The next day at work, I tell a white coworker that I was pulled over for no reason. He immediately tells me this just doesn’t happen and there is always a reason. I tell him about the whole exchange, and he’s shocked. This might be the first time he has heard a story like this from a person of color. He assures me that “doing some checks in the area” is not a thing. He looks at my license and all he says is “Wow, you may be right about that officer.” My favorite thing to do was to show people the picture and ask them if they could believe he didn’t think it looked like me. They can’t. Also unbelievable: Our third-grade playground back-and-forth of “No, it doesn’t!” “Yes, it does!” Ha, ha, ha! So lucky to be alive!

Worst Member of the ASPCA

I was working at a retirement home and a white coworker was trying to talk to me about race during the morning meeting.

Sidenote: Almost every morning meeting I have ever had is, at best, very bad. I cannot explain why this is the place for people’s racism to come out. I’m not a scientist, but I assume it’s because a lot of your racist coworkers wake up chock-full of racism and it has to come out early or else it puts their Black coworkers in danger of having a good day.

We have just had a very serious conversation about a resident who refuses to be helped by Black staff. This person does nothing but berate Black employees with racial slurs and sometimes physically tries to harm them. As I’m explaining how difficult it is to work with this resident and that several staff members are thinking about quitting because of him, my white coworker chimes in. I am not kidding you when I tell you this woman says, “I understand how hard it is being Black. Have you ever heard of the black dog campaign?”

Girrrrrrrrlllll, so you know about being paralyzed with fear? Well, at this moment, I am paralyzed with racism. I know exactly what this woman’s next words will be, and I know that they will be so racist that I’ll remember them forever. Yet I am unable to stop the impending doom (or rather, impending dumb). I’m trying to figure out who in the world I can call to bail me out of jail. Who am I kidding? My bail will be set too high, and I will spend the rest of my life in prison. Deep breath. This woman says, “You know, black dogs never get adopted so it’s very hard for them in the shelters because they are the first to be euthanized.” Please. In the name of sweet Black baby Jesus explain to me what this has to do with this conversation? We are talking about human beings and this bitch is like “all dogs matter.” Anyways, after she says that, I fight her, and spend the rest of my life in jail. Just kidding. But I wish I had.

Best Example of Why We Need Diversity Training at Diversity Training

This one is my favorite because I remember years ago when this happened and how hard I laughed. Lacey used to work with a man who was from a small town with absolutely no people of color, and it showed every time he opened his mouth. Let’s call him Chris. When Lacey first met him, he would often ask her if she would get him a coffee from the break room. Like he was in charge of her. He was not. Lacey would always say the same thing, “No. I am never going to get you coffee because I am not your secretary. I’m no one’s secretary. But if I were someone’s secretary, it would not be for you because you do not have one.” She had been at this company over ten years before he started working there and had never gotten anyone a cup of coffee. Chris would have to stay thirsty. For his first three months Chris constantly would ask Lacey about running track. Running track. Running. Lacey has not run since 1985. She does like to go to the gym, but she has always hated cardio. I mean hate it. She very does not run. If a bear was chasing her, she would lie down, sprinkle some salt on herself, and hand the bear a fork.

If I had to be bear dinner, I would want to be seasoned.

So no, she never ran track. He is shocked by this and keeps asking her as if she forgot! “Are you sure you never ran track? Come on, I bet you can run real fast.” Once they were all walking back to the parking lot and Chris says, “Show me how fast you can run: let’s race back to the cars. I know you must be fast, but I bet I can keep up.”

Oh, I remember that day! We had just left the building getting ready to go home. So I said, “Sure, let’s race.” He was so excited as he yelled, “On your mark, get set, go!” He took off running like a bat out of hell never looking behind him, and I turned around and walked back in the building. He still didn’t get the hint.

This is a thing some Black people have to endure when interacting with white people: they assume you are great at sports. Lacey asked him, “Why aren’t you asking anyone else in the office if they ran track? I think you’re assuming all Black people are good at sports. That’s ignorant. You need to stop asking me this. It’s making you look bad.” So that’s who we are dealing with here. THE STORY HASN’T EVEN STARTED!

Anyhoo, Lacey was at diversity training at work, and they were about to do a pretty common exercise. You know the one. Everyone is asked to stand in a line, and as certain life questions are asked you either step forward if you have benefited from your privilege or you take a step back if this affects you negatively due to race or socioeconomic background. As the exercise goes on most women and people of color are in the back of the room. But Chris is far ahead of everyone else when the exercise is over, meaning he is the most privileged. He yells out, “I won, I won! I won diversity training!” A human man yelled that for real. They all try to explain to him that this is not a game and that no one “wins’’ this exercise. This is to show how easy you have it in life and that you need to understand how white privilege works. Like a Will Ferrell character in a hilarious sketch, he talks over them the entire time, giddy as hell. He is too busy celebrating to listen. Then, and this is real, Chris goes into an acceptance speech about how his parents raised him right. And then, in a most unfortunate tangent, he blames people of color for not being respectful to police officers, saying this is why there are so many “problems” during police stops. This all took place AT diversity training. The trainer tried her best to explain it. He was not receptive. She never got through to him.

He continues to work there and nothing bad ever happened to him. In fact, there was a police investigation because there was a lot of money missing from the office. A lot of people thought Chris stole it, but there was no proof. Once the police got involved, Lacey just knew she was gonna get blamed because she’s so very Black. But she didn’t! Miracle! Chris, even though people thought he stole it, never got in trouble. He’s probably working somewhere right now challenging his Black coworkers to races. And, in a way, because he got to arrive with racist beliefs, and leave with them and a job, he did. He did win diversity training.

Most Frugal Racist

For “Most Frugal Racist,” it’s a two-way tie between “Salmon” and “That’s Thirty Dollars.” Here’s “Salmon.”

Lacey’s at one of her favorite fancy restaurants for her birthday. It’s her and about fifteen Black women. At the end of their long table there is an old white couple sitting at a table for two. They’ve already started their meal. They are so close to Lacey and her friends that they have interjected themselves into their party and most of their conversation. This is a dumb thing to do.

I know that we should have put an early stop to that but they were so fun and nice! You would have done the same thing!

You may have a point. I do like it when old people are fun. So, they all laugh and have fun together until the old couple gets their doggy bag. The food is wrapped in foil like a swan. At Lacey’s table, some of the people in her party were still waiting for their meal.

Our lawyers have reviewed this book and they ask that at this point, you reach out and grab on to the most stable thing near you.

This couple, you guys, this old weird ass white couple stood up and walked to the head of Lacey’s table to make a speech. They told them that they barely touched their extremely expensive salmon. They then did something unbelievable. They offered Lacey and her friends their leftovers. Now, that is already the worst thing on planet Earth but it gets even worse! They went on to say if Lacey and her friends didn’t feel like paying full price for a meal and wanted to save money they could BUY their barely touched salmon for a good price. BUY IT. Upon their saying this, Lacey’s spirit was knocked into another galaxy where it is socially acceptable to cuss out old people in public and she said, “You ancient raggedy fucks, how dare you try to sell us food you have touched. The level of clean you would have to be for me to take a bite of your food after you’ve eaten it does not exist. If you couldn’t afford to take your salmon home and reheat it later tonight, then maybe you can’t afford to eat here, bitch. I know we had a fun fifteen minutes sitting together, but now, I have to beat your asses.”

Okay that didn’t really happen but in my heart it did.

Then, her spirit returned to this realm where the entire table of her friends was laughing as the couple walked away because it was the looniest thing they had ever heard. Eating food strangers have touched?! There is no way that if they had been a table full of old white men he would have tried to sell them his discounted salmon. If this has ever happened to any old white men, please contact Lacey.

I’m serious. Please let me know the restaurant, meal, and price tag. I’m very curious.

Just for fun, here’s a list of people I will not share my food with for fear of catching their disgusting germs:

And here’s “That’s Thirty Dollars.”

One day I visited the Omaha Zoo with some friends. We decided to meet for lunch first. During lunch my girlfriend was telling me how one of her favorite parts of my book was how people always tell me how expensive things are when I ask for prices. Everyone at lunch could totally relate and we all had a good laugh sharing our “this is really expensive” stories. We arrive at the zoo and have a great time walking around, enjoying the animals and the great weather. When leaving the zoo, we decide to walk through the gift shop. I told my girlfriends that my daughter was just here, and I wanted to show them the big stuffed animal she just bought. I pull the huge stuffed stingray off the shelf and all of a sudden a small white child comes flying out of nowhere and yells, and I mean yells, “That’s thirty dollars!” I look right at him. He is holding a small toy, and his mom is standing behind him with her hands crossed and nodding her head yes, as if to say, Yes this is very expensive. He tells me he looked at the stingray but his mother is making him get the smaller, cheaper toy. I replied, “Yes! I can see that it’s thirty dollars because they put the price right here. My daughter just bought the stingray, but your toy is very nice.” I added that my daughter bought the stingray just so the mother would know yes, we can afford this. My friends say he was standing there, just staring so hard, waiting for me to put it back. I say I know, he really wanted me to put it back on the shelf. But I did not. I can’t explain the disapproval on the mother’s face of me holding that “beyond expensive” stingray. How angry she was watching me walk around the store with it still in my arms when she left. Wondering if I would purchase this stupid toy and start a stingray collection. Her son is very good at price-checking people, got to start them early.