Behind The Language

Thank God, we were raised and nurtured in a society that makes me uneasy around people who look like Afrikans or Indians or I see traces of Afrikan or Indian in them, but they call themselves something else, denying their Afrikan or Indian ancestry, I told them.
'You won't have to say anything,' one of the blacks said.  'We don't want them to know that you understand their language.  They're bringing their interpreter, but we don' t trust them.'  If I feel myself getting nervous, I told them, I'll yell something and you can kick me on the foot to slow me down.

At the meeting, the five of us blacks and the six of them, including their interpreter, sat around this long, tan collapsible table.  The interpreter, black, about 6'4", even seated was head and shoulders above everyone else.  It was not what one of them said -- I agreed with some of it -- but the outlandish, hypocritical interpretation shocked and insulted me.
The man looked at the interpreter and said, 'You can verify that in our country variety of color is ignored.  We're all equal, just one people . . .'  Must be a hell'uva dull country, I thought.  '. . . we want to deal with this tension between our two groups in this country.' he continued.  'In our country we don't have any of this black annoyance some of these brutes are always causing . . .'  The interpreter interrupted.  'He said that we want to work with the brilliant black people causing problems in this country . . .'  I let out a loud "ouch!" and the black sitting next to me whopped my foot and everybody jerked in my direction.

' . . . many people consider us to be an emotional people,' the man continued, 'but much of that emotion is performance, fulfilling the personality associated with this identity we have, but not like some of these brutes.  One minute they're sullen and solemn as if on some kind of tranquilizers  and the next moment they're screaming and hollering, rioting in the streets and on college campuses, burning buildings, looting, and shooting police, and acting like wild savages --'  "Aarrgh . . ." gurgling from my throat, I leaped up and losing my balance grabbed the edge of the table, but fell to the floor, groaning "aarrgh, aarragh . . ." and the others had jumped to their feet so rapidly and roughly that they knocked the table over on me.  I felt as if all blood had drained from my body and I had turned completely pale.  They dragged me out into the air and after about ten minutes I was back to normal and glad to see that those six strange people were no longer there.  I told the black dudes what the speaker had said in his language.
'We need somebody we can trust in all these languages.  Got people waving the American flag one minute and the next waving the flag of some other country,' one of the blacks said.  'You know any Arabic?'
I knew the history between blacks and Arabs and told him that I didn't have anything to talk to Arabs about.  I also told him that I stayed away from black, white, red, brown, and Asian people.
'Then what're you doing with us?' he asked.
"Come on, now," I told him, "We hypocrites gotta stick together or the hypocrites around us will bury us."