White boy at the black sorority meeting (part one)

It's the kind of thing that should never happen: Oil and water mixing, Tom Brady getting hurt, Lance Armstrong and Ashley Olsen getting together, Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellweger marrying, Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellweger divorcing, Google losing market share. Not that it never happens, but, like "No Country for Old Men" winning an Oscar, the odds are admittedly strong against the occurrence. So when it happens, whatever it is, it's newsworthy.

The "it" tense is getting old, cryptic and confusing, so let me put the hillbilly kabosh (not nearly as sexy as it sounds) on "it" and introduce a few more facts that'll allow me to open up my English playbook.

Reginald set up a social engagement for me. Seeing how bleak and uninteresting my social life is ("Hey, wanna study with me?"), he pledged to find an entertaining way for me to get out of the house and meet some new people. Reginald didn't tell me what the event was or what kind of people I would be meeting; he just drove us to a park near a local university - not the one I attend, thank goodness - and advised, after studying his timepiece, that the "party" was "just about to get started."

As we walked away from our car toward a well decorated "Welcome Alpha Kappa Alpha West Coast Chapter" sign, I wondered why Reginald was so excited about this evening. I did not, at that moment, know that AKA was one of the nation's largest black sororities, nor did I, at that moment, particularly care. I have never been heavily involved with either Greek or ethnic "life" (as if membership in fraternity defines one's life), and I didn't think Reginald was the frat house type.

Before going on, there will be people who, no matter how many times they read this paragraph, will accuse me and this note of being a racist. The mere mention of ethnic differences pegs me -- an ethnic majority (depending on how much you blur things) -- as prejudiced and biased against other people groups. Folks, we really need to get past all this. We are living in a post-racial world. The time for allegations of bigotry and ethnocentrism has past. We have elected Barack O'Bama as our President. There is no more room for hatred when we have chosen "hope" as our leader. I, for one, have released the hatred and bigotry of the past and embraced with joyful emotion the reality of perfect egalitarianism. Allegations of racism and questions about my latent hatred are dated, wrong and unnecessarily remind us all of a time when equality sat in the back of the bus instead of the President's motorcade. Stop living in an 11/3 world, people! Racism is dead. O'Bama has vanquished it.

If anything, this post is more misogynistic then it is racist. The next few paragraphs will have a couple of disparaging remarks toward women that should get me in trouble with Mommy G and...wait for it...the female writers here at FCN. The American people snubbed Hillary and thus all women, so go ahead and send us an email about our unliberated view of femininity. Tell us how we hate all women and use that silly euphemism for our A-shirts that says more about your fantasies than our violence. But before clicking the send button on that hate tome, know that this post was written during a lecture about cross-ethnic sensitivity in a post-Caucasian world (such a turn on!), so that might be a point in my favor depending on how we're counting score.

But enough covering for my sensitive parts.

You could smell the estrogen before you could see it. As Reginald and I drew near, we saw that the park was teaming with overweight African-American females. It looked like a scene from Baldwin Hills, except that all the attractive people were removed and everyone added thirty pounds in unflattering places. A couple of women in particular added a good many more than thirty pounds.

As far as the eye could see there was not a single male. Nor were there any married men. As far as the eye could see there was not a single white person. Nor, for that matter, were any ethnicities represented other than various strains of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

I stared at Reginald. What have you dragged me into? Reginald was unphased. In fact, he barely broke stride as he shouted the four syllable name of someone he recognized and waived me on to meet his friends.

I could list on one hand the number of things I have in common with your average sorority member and, after spending an evening with the lovely members of Alpha Kappa Alpha (they were really quite friendly folks once I started chatting), I can still count the number on one hand, but I use fewer fingers.

To be continued...