by Amber Ruffin
This man has a picture of him and some kid wearing afro wigs together. We will never know why. We will never know what they were doing or who they were pretending to be. We will never know if they put on an afro wig and shouted, “Look! I look ridiculous in this hair!” or “This beautiful hair fills me with respect for the Black community.” It’s just information we don’t have. What we do know is this took two perfectly good afro wigs away from someone who could’ve really rocked them.
This all seems fine until the last line: “Black women want a lowlife as a man.” Frigging shock of the century right there. You see, I’m a Black woman and on my list of must-haves in a guy you will not find “Hates work, loves to stab.” I also know a lot of other Black women who feel the same. But hey, maybe he knows something I don’t.
Here’s one of my favorites: This man thinks that deleting pictures of a confederate flag hanging in his house is gonna make Lacey see him as someone she wants to get to know. Sure, he took the pictures down, but are these flags still hanging in his house? Was that even his house? These are the questions no one wants answered! Can you imagine? “Well, he did have a confederate flag in his profile pictures, but when he took it down, I knew he was the one for me.”
(To the tune of Beauty and the Beast)
OLDEST PICKUP LINE
TRITE AS IT CAN BEEEE
SUPER TOP-OF-MIND
SAY “CHOCOLATE” ONE MORE TIME
I’LL GO ON A KILLING SPREEEEE!
“I guess I’ve always preferred darker features. Even with wine.” Blarf.
This book isn’t supposed to be rated R, but let me just say, WHAT? How is this man’s hitting on a person basically saying, “You can have sex with me and I’m not going to be particularly good at it and you can do all the work!” This is the message that made Lacey give up completely. As you can see, she didn’t have the energy to respond. She had to walk away. Just like we will now—from this section!
The Tale of Pocahontas
Halloween is that special time of year when every Black person decides whether or not they’re going to have a conversation with white people about dressing up as other ethnicities. For whatever reason—call it feeling generous, or having a short-term memory—Lacey is talking to a coworker about how it’s not okay to dress up as other races for Halloween. This coworker cannot stand it. She can understand why blackface is wrong (small victories), but she cannot understand why she shouldn’t dress up as other ethnicities, having the ethnicity itself be the costume. So this lady starts naming different costumes, certain that Lacey will tell her one is okay.
“Indian chief?” No. And you shouldn’t be saying “Indian chief.” “China doll?” Not exactly sure what you mean by that, but if you mean dressing up in traditional Chinese clothes and calling yourself a doll? No. “Pocahontas?” What? “The Indian chief, Pocahontas!” Everything is wrong with what you just said. Please try to get used to never referring to America’s indigenous people as “Indians.” And no, definitely not. That’s the worst. No Pocahontas. All of these are examples of cultural appropriation. It’s not okay in your day-to-day life, and just because it’s Halloween doesn’t make it okay then. I’m honestly shocked you can’t see that that’s offensive. The lady looks down at the table and gives it a good think. She’s taken in a lot of information. Maybe she just needs time. There is a long pause before the lady says, “Even Pocahontas?”
This lady is saddened. Lacey has ruined her day. But she’s already opened up this can of worms, so she might as well see how far she can fling them.
So the lady calls a coworker, Roxanne, into the room. Roxanne is white but Lacey knows some of her friends are activists in the community. This lady is about to get schooled. She explains to Roxanne that all this is an overreaction. “Lacey says that people aren’t supposed to dress up as other ethnicities! Not even on Halloween!” Roxanne tries to make the lady see things from Lacey’s point of view. It does not work. “I just don’t see why it’s so bad.” Roxanne has had enough of this lady. She simply says, “I can see why that’s offensive and I can also see why you won’t change your mind.” Big fucking help. Get the fuck outta here, Roxanne. Lacey said that to Roxanne using her eyes. Then, using her mouth, she said to the lady, “Listen. It’s not my job to tell people what is racist. Dressing up as different ethnicities is cultural appropriation. Whether you know it is or not.” Lacey now sees that this woman is on the verge of a frigging breakdown. “Soooo you’re telling me it’s wrong if my child dresses up as Pocahontas for Halloween?” There we go. We found it. This woman’s problem was that she dressed her child up as Pocohontas for Halloween and didn’t want to feel guilty about it. Too bad. Lacey tells her, “Have you read the true story of Pocahontas? If you did, you wouldn’t want your baby to dress like her. That Disney version is not how it went down.”
“But celebrating Indian chiefs is a nice thing to do!”
“Please stop saying ‘Indian chiefs.’”
There was a long pause. It had been a good ten minutes of yapping back and forth. Yards had been gained and lost. But Lacey had made some good points without the help of the ever-useless middle-of-the-road-ing, more-harm-than-good-ing of stupid Roxanne. The lady looked up at Lacey with genuine sorrow in her eyes and said, “I think I get it.…Is it okay if I dress up my child as a Native American?”
Lacey gave all the way up in many different ways that day.
Amber and I texted back and forth about this all day. Amber replied: “Sure, she can dress her child up as Pocahontas, but not if you ever want her to run for office.”
Lacey’s Magic Trick
Lacey once had a retail job at a high-end boutique. Because it was a bunch of rich people day in and day out, it was not uncommon to hear someone say something insane. Bosses, coworkers, and, most of all, customers. On this particular day, an older white man walks in and Lacey greets him. They talk about how he is enjoying his day. He then asks Lacey how she is. As she is talking, a stunned look comes over his face. Lacey thinks to herself, Hmm. You know what, this old man is right. I’m an enthralling storyteller. More people should react like this when I speak. Mid-reply, this old man cuts her off, stunned. He says, “Wow! Your diction is perfect!” It figures that an ounce of confidence would be blown into oblivion. “Where are you from?” I’m from right here in Omaha, sir. “Wow. I’ve just never heard a Black person speak as well as you.” Now, this man is as old as time and Lacey is at work. This comment’s gonna have to slide. As Lacey hurries away from him to leave him alone to let him shop, his wife walks by the store. He shouts to her. “COME IN HERE! YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS!” He motions to his wife to come in the store so she can hear Lacey talk. Sorry, I wrote that last sentence incorrectly. He motions to his wife to come in the store so that Lacey, the carnival attraction, could impress some relic by sounding different than the two Black people he once talked to in 1948.
Lacey did not want to participate in this. She goes, “I need to make an important phone call.” She walks away. The man and his wife stay there and watch her. WAITING FOR HER TO COME BACK AND WOW THEM! So Lacey picks up the phone and calls herself. As they watch her, she proceeds to leave herself the longest message. She gives a few addresses, checks up on the status of several accounts, and receives bad news about a loved one. These people are still there! Lacey babbles on and they finally leave. Those two old people were probably shocked that she figured out how to use the phone.
Getting Followed Around by JCPenney Security: A Retrospective
There’s Tom and Jerry. Sonic and Robotnik, Sherlock and Moriarty, and Lacey and JCPenney. Let me tell you a Ruffin family classic. We are having a day at the mall and it’s very fun. I’m walking around with Lacey and Mom and our brother, Jimmy, shopping for a swimsuit to wear on vacation. I’m a kid and Lacey is an old teenager. We are in JCPenney. Now, we aren’t going to go blasting brand names all over the place. That’s not what this is about. But if you’ve been followed around by loss prevention in a particular sto
re enough to make it a whole part of a book, I think it’s okay. They’re so famous in my family that we changed their old jingle from “JCPenney! Doing it right!” to “JCPenney! Up against the wall and spread ’em!” To be clear, these few times are a fraction of the times we were followed around in this store. Look! Here’s a graph.
No one has ever looked twice at me in a T.J. Maxx. I don’t shoplift but I could have robbed them BLIND. And, yes, the most is that big national drugstore, but that’s a whole different thing. There isn’t a Black person alive who wasn’t followed around at big national drugstore. Like, JCPenney may be a special Ruffin thing, but big national drugstore is all of us.
Quick story within a story: Our sister Angie was so fed up with getting followed around big national drugstore that her junior high school friends would go there with their one white friend. They’d enter separately and the Black girls would go up and down a lot of the aisles and be followed by security around the store. Meanwhile, the white friend would come in, unnoticed, and take a ton of stuff. She learned how to Make Racism Work for You! (tm) Notice how we don’t use their name but do use JCPenney’s name? That’s how bad they were.
Okay, so we are in the girls’ section at JC-fucking-Penney as Mom is finishing up with Jimmy in the boys’ section. We are looking at swimsuits when Lacey is approached by a guy who looks like a teenager with a shopping bag, a long ponytail, tan polo with khakis, and a walkie-talkie on his belt. He comes up to Lacey and is like, “JCPenney Security—come with me!”
Now, I’m frigging terrified. Mom isn’t there and this man is trying to get us to go with him to a second location! And I’ve evolved since, but the first thought of ten-year-old me when I see this guy is He’s a white man with a ponytail! He’s gonna kill us! At this point, Lacey has not tried on a single thing. She is in a spaghetti-strap dress and is carrying a tiny purse. She hands him the purse and says, “I haven’t stolen anything. Here, look for yourself.” He says, “No. You need to come with me.”
Ah, the joys of your first time being stopped by loss prevention. It’s how you know you’ve become a woman. A Black woman.
Lacey’s being a shoplifter sure comes as a surprise to me because I know her and she would rather lose an eye than break the rules. And not only does neither of us have the ability to shoplift, but if Mom ever thought we were shoplifting, we would have to straight-up find a new family. She would explain that her love for you was purely biological at this point and throw you into the sea. If you made it to shore safely, you could live, but not with her. It is at this point that Mom walks up and things really get fun.
Quick few facts about my mommy: She skipped second and seventh grades ’cause she has a bad case of the smarts; if you think you could win an argument with her you must be insane; and, last, she isn’t fond of people messing with her children.
Mom loudly says, “What’s going on?” and grabs Ponytail by the arm. It is at this point our genius brother, Jimmy, takes the keys to the van and says, “I’ll be in the car.” He knew what was coming. Lacey told Mom, “He thinks I stole something and wants me to go with him.” My mother says that’s not happening.
“Your daughter was shoplifting. We saw her on the security cameras.”
“Oh! You watched her shoplift? I’d love to see that footage, as I have been with her all day.”
“We can’t show that to you.”
“I bet you can’t. Do you have any proof she was shoplifting?”
“The dress she is wearing still has a tag on it.”
“So you didn’t see her shoplifting at all. You saw the dress she is wearing still had a tag on it. You saw a white price tag on the inside of a white dress on security footage. You must have state-of-the-art cameras.”
(It is in this exact moment that he realizes he’s been tripped up in his own words.)
At this point shoppers have started to gather. This is before Worldstar and social media. The only way to catch a glimpse of real humiliation was to just so happen to be there. These folks were lucky. They got to watch a real-life shoplifter get caught! Lacey is embarrassed to death and convinces Mom to let her go with them so this doesn’t escalate any further. We follow Ponytail to the shoe department. He knocks a special secret knock on what I would have assumed was a wall. It swings open and Lacey and this guy go inside.
Inside, there are a bunch of fools looking at security camera feeds. Lacey walks in and they ask her to turn around and lift up her hair. “Why? I’m not getting undressed.” There is not much that can fit under this dress. He explains, “No, the employee at the register saw a tag.” Lacey turns around and there is a small piece of plastic that you would see on a new item still attached to her dress. One of the men says, “It’s not our tag.” Lacey replies, “You humiliated me and marched me through your department store over a piece of plastic? I’m going to need your names.” They all refuse to tell her any names and send Lacey out of the room back to us.
When Lacey comes out, she tells Mom that she was unable to get their names. Mom shouts to their secret door, reminding them they are terrible at their jobs. To us, she is defending Lacey’s honor. To passersby, she is yelling at a wall. The best part of it was when he went back into the room, he knocked a special knock and slid into the office. Mom, while yelling, knocked the exact special knock and shouted, “I know about your little secret knock. You’re not slick.”
To this day, I say that to myself every time I knock on a door.
Lacey looked into suing them and was told by a lawyer that since she went with them willingly to look at the tag, not much could be done. He told her, “If something like that happens again, just walk away.”
It was really important for us to see Mom handle this situation this way. I think a lot of people think there’s no way they can protest how they’re being treated. But this was how I learned you can. And, again, I’ll do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it, but it’s nice to know that if I feel like it, I can really show the fuck out and that’s okay too. I have options.
After that incident, Lacey would see Ponytail every single time she was there. He would follow her around whenever she was in the store and Lacey would say, “I see you! I see what you’re doing.” He must stop every Black person who comes in there, so he doesn’t remember Lacey. But Lacey remembers him because in order to go into the store, she has to consider if she can stand being followed around or not. He would essentially harass her.
Almost a year to the day later, Lacey was seeing The Lion King at the same mall. The movie theater was right next to JCPenney. The setup goes: JCPenney, mall bathrooms, movie theater, exit to the mall. Lacey and her boyfriend are talking about how much fun they just had. He decides to go to the bathroom. Lacey waits for him right outside. The movie had just ended and the whole theater full of people had emptied out and everyone was walking to the exit. As Lacey’s standing there waiting, she hears someone yell, “JCPenney Security! Ma’am, come with me!” Now, since Lacey’s many run-ins with them, everyone she knows teases her by yelling “Stop! JCPenney Security!” to her while in public. It’s funny. So when she’s in the mall surrounded by people, she assumes this is being yelled by a friend of hers. She feels a hand grab her arm. A voice says, “Where are those bags you just had?” Whichever friend of hers this is is really committed. She turns around and it’s Ponytail.
Welp, you know what they say: “When you find a job you stink at, do it until you ruin lives.”
Somehow, in the sea of people, he found her and accused her of stealing. Terrible as it is, it’s nice to know you’re someone’s favorite. Looking for shoplifters, settling for Lacey, her turning out to be innocent, and then starting all over again—it’s the CIIIRCLE OF LIIIIFE ! She pulls out of his grip and says, “This is not happening again.” Ponytail really begins to make a scene here in the mall in the middle of this sea of people. “Don’t you go anywhere! We’re taking you in!” Lacey calmly walks into the men’s bathroom to get her boyfriend. She doesn’t care.
It’s time to go. Ponytail yells, “Stop! Come back here.” Her boyfriend is at the urinal and Lacey yells, “JCP did it again! This guy just grabbed my arm and accused me of stealing.” Boyfriend finishes peeing and they come out of the restroom. “But you weren’t even in JCPenney today!” Ponytail is trying to block the restroom exit while yelling into a walkie-talkie. “Yes, I have her right here. Hurry up!” They push past him and start walking to the exit. This is what the lawyer told them to do. As they make their way to the exit, two more security guys show up. Ponytail points at Lacey and says, “She’s right here!” At this point, people have stopped leaving the mall and are crowded around Lacey, her boyfriend, and the now three security guards. They don’t stop walking to the exit. Security is closing in. Boyfriend makes sure to yell, “You better not touch her!” As they close in on the exit, the three security guards block their path. They’re going to grab them. Here we go. Right before they do, a fourth security guard runs up to them and says to his colleagues, “What are you doing? That’s not her!”
The rest of them, without apology, turn and just walk away. Not a word. There is a huge crowd watching and they say nothing. Lacey is pissed. All of that humiliation for no reason at all. She says, “That’s it? You guys are going to stalk me, chase me, accuse me of stealing, and then just walk away? I need to speak to a supervisor!” She follows them into JCPenney. They’re far ahead, but she can see them leading a girl with her hands cuffed behind her. They’ve found the culprit, and you will never believe what she looks like. She’s Hispanic, 200 pounds, and has mustard-yellow bell-bottoms on. Lacey has on a summer dress. You couldn’t find a pair of mustard-yellow bell-bottoms? That’s all you had to say! If you ever have seen mustard-yellow bell-bottoms, you frigging remember that shit! These idiots can’t even say “yellow pants”? It’s like the description they gave was “girl” when it should’ve been “girl riding a unicorn.”