The Average White Man

At the risk of sounding like a taxi driver, I’m not racist… but it recently occurred to me that despite coming to London over four years ago, I still do not have a single friend who is black. Not one. Which is surprising considering (a) what an absolute pleasure I am to be around at all times, and more pertinently (b) how many black people live here. Admittedly, I don’t have the exact figures to hand, but a cursory glance out the window would suggest that it’s at least seven and possibly more.

Indeed, not only do I not have any friends who are black, but I don’t have any acquaintances who are black either, unless you count the bloke with the shiny gold tooth who can invariably be found smoking spliffs and drinking cans of lager in my local betting shop. But even as acquaintanceships go, ours is fairly tenuous: we’re on nodding terms, we occasionally share far-fetched equine conspiracy theories, he knows me well enough to borrow the odd fiver from me and I know him well enough to realise that once I’ve handed it over I’ll never get it back.
So to say we’re very close would be something of an exaggeration. We’re unlikely to go water-skiing or driving fast cars together anytime soon, and in the unlikely event of my ever seeing him being attacked by a shark or a bear, I almost certainly won’t wade in to help him.
However, I should add that this willingness on my part to stand idly by while he’s being consumed is absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he is black and everything to do with the fact that I’m a total coward. I can honestly say with my hand on my heart that I’d do just as little to help any man in the same situation, regardless of his race or creed.
Which I suppose would suggest that, like I said, I’m not a racist … but, the reason I’m even addressing this issue is because while flicking through a series of snaps from a party staged in my house a few months ago, I was particularly taken by one featuring me deep in conversation with a black bloke. And while the copious amounts of booze I consumed on the night in question ensured that I have absolutely no idea who he is, what we were talking about or how he came to be in my home, I found myself filled with a sense of enormous well-being for no other reason than the fact that London’s Afro-Caribbean community had been represented at our bash and had, by all accounts, a good time.
All of which smug patronising must make me the worst kind of self-satisfied, wet liberal. And maybe, just maybe, a little bit racist. After all, if I really considered people who aren’t white to be my equal, the sight of pictorial evidence of me chatting to a black person would hardly warm the cockles of my heart to such an extent.
Now it’s not as if I expected the photograph to show me dressed in white robes while tying this bloke’s unconscious body to the tow-bar of a pick-up, but I just find it odd that after over three decades on God’s green earth, four years of which were spent in a city that is a bubbling cultural melting pot, I can count the number of people I know, who are not white, on the fingers of one hand.
Growing up in Offaly didn’t help, I suppose. In the ’70s and ’80s black people hadn’t really been invented in rural Ireland, with the result that that I encountered so few of them in my formative years that whenever I did end up meeting any, I’d go so far out of my way to prove how comfortable I was in their company that the conversation would spiral out of control and I’d end up babbling like a fuckwit.
Of course living in a world where political correctness is gone stone-hatchet mad doesn’t help, a fact that was driven home to me recently when I found myself in a group that included a bloke who was both black and gay. “Fantastic,” I thought to myself. “I’ll get on famously with this chap and I’ll soon be ticking all sorts of boxes in my ongoing quest for well-roundedness.”
Sadly, it turned out the man in question was deeply troubled by many problems, most of which seemed to be of his own making, despite him choosing to blame them all on the imaginary homophobes and racists he appeared to encounter at every turn in life. His very existence was a constant struggle, he complained at length, because everyone he met was a complete bigot.
It occurred to me that perhaps his very existence was a constant struggle because he was a paranoid, whining bore, a theory I finally put to him, albeit in slightly more subtle terms, after having had him bend my ear with a litany of self-pity for 45 minutes. In return, he sniffed haughtily, turned away and didn’t say another word to me for the rest of the night. Thank God.
Later on, a mutual friend asked me what I had done to upset the man, and I told her that I’d been dismissed out of hand for being a bigot like everybody else. “If that’s the case, then so be it,” I declared. “But I am not spending another minute chatting to that fucker. It’s too depressing.”
My friend laughed: “Is there any chance the reason you didn’t like him is because he’s an asshole?” she enquired.
When I said that was exactly the reason, she declared that this was why nobody else ever took a shine to him either. “If it makes you feel any better,” she chuckled. “He called you a homophobic Irish bogman.”
See. A homophobic Irish bogman. But not a racist one. All my fears were groundless.