For me, summer is officially over when I can no longer get a juicy, sweet, red watermelon. The one I purchased today rated only a five on a scale of one-to-ten.
My love of watermelon is so strong that I’ve been known to rush the season and occasionally buy one in April or May when they first appear in stores, and always wind up getting ridiculed by my wife for wasting money on an un-sweet melon. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, simply says I’m crazy for not taking the bland fruit back to the store for a refund.
But since I do the family shopping and return home on Saturdays usually before anyone else has arisen in the household, I try to put the failed produce into the compost barrel in the backyard … without my wife being any wiser that I once again allowed my passion for watermelon to snooker me. Sometimes she catches me at it.
Ah, but during the height of the summer season I eat a healthy slice of delicious watermelon almost every day, and on some days I partake of more than one. Bear with me here, I’m going somewhere with this.
My deceased friend (whom I took much inspiration and courage from), the famed playwright and poet Amiri Baraka, once regaled a group of us with the story of how he almost got kicked out of Howard University back in the late ’50s for sitting on the steps of one of the buildings on campus eating a slice of watermelon. The dean of students was walking past and sternly asked him what did he think he was doing.
“It’s obvious I’m eating a piece of watermelon,” Amiri responded, and then asked the gentleman why he didn’t question any of the other three students (who were eating other types of fruits) what they were doing. The dean turned on his heels and walked away, but summons the offender into his office the next day to have a little chat about the image the university wanted to project. Of course Amiri didn’t pay the dean any attention, and continued to eat whatever he damn well pleased, wherever he damn well pleased.
Fast-forward to this past Labor Day weekend, when, on my radio show, I was casually discussing how I prepare the barbecue ribs we usually enjoy on holidays; almost predictably one of the knuckle draggers who constantly write hateful, racist text messages to the station when I’m on the air attempted to have some sport with me by asking, “Are you going to have watermelon too, Frazier?” to which I responded on the air, “Damn right I am!”
Simply because racists of another era depicted jet black kids with bright red lips eating watermelon in cartoons, I — a hundred years later — am supposed to be ashamed of eating a fruit I dearly love? Am I supposed to care that much about what racist whites think?
I know, I know, there are still some antiquated blacks so afraid or ashamed of their own culture and past, so fearful of what white folks will think about them (especially those who reside in what they think are fashionable, upscale enclaves) they take a bowling ball bag to the super market with them, in which to secret their watermelons, so their white neighbors won’t see them toting this delicious fruit into their homes. These black folks are better described as “Negroes.” Fortunately, they are a dying breed.
Actually, the query about what I might be eating on Labor Day was one of the milder comments I receive via text when I’m on the air; some nights I have what I call a “three coon night” when totaling up the number of times I get called the derogatory word during a single show … not to mention the times I’m called the “N” word. And these troglodytes have the nerve to call me a racist. Go figure.
I have to admit the bigoted comments often are in response to me calling out far right wingnuts on some issue or another on the air, and, in a somewhat perverse way, I relish the smarmy comments; if they didn’t scream, how else would I know I’m sticking it to them? The truth obviously hurts them.
And here’s another truth: on a day-to-day basis I usually deal with whites (and blacks) that function far, far above the color line; if I judged the world only by these interactions I have with fair-minded folk, I (like some of my younger friends) might mistakenly believe we’re already in a post-racial world … we’re not. But we’re heading in the right direction, which seemingly aggravates hardcore reactionaries to no end.
We — all of us no matter what race, who work every day towards making ours a fair, just and pacific society — need to know (be constantly reminded) that virulent racism is still alive and extant in this land of ours … that hatred based on skin color is far from dead, and that our work is nowhere near done.
As for me, I just love being engaged in the heavy lifting our society requires to make ours a better country, but in the interim I’m simply awaiting next summer when the watermelons are once again sweet, red and delicious.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: The End of Watermelon Season”
BD
Mansfield, you are simply awesome!!