My partner Barbara and I were incredulous when the painter gave us his
estimate of what it would cost to paint our small apartment: three
thousand dollars. Seeking to justify the cost and win us over, he began to
describe the quality of the work he would do, ending with, "And I don't hire any
black people to do the work."

"What are you talking about?" was the only thing I was able to get out.
I didn't have to look at Barbara to sense the anger that she felt. When I
did, her eyes were all scrunched up as if she were trying to beam the
painter to another planet.

This conversation took place last year in our living room in Manhattan,
not in some isolated hamlet in some ultra-conservative area. And the painter
was a gay, Jewish man who lived in another borough in New York City. We
had found him by checking the classified ads in the local gay newspaper. As
a lesbian couple, we like to support lesbian/gay-owned businesses.

With this guy we got more than we bargained for. "A lot of my clients
don't want black people in their homes," he went on to explain. "My mother is
the same way. I hire guys from Peru, from Poland. They do a day's work, they
don't steal anything. You don't have to worry."

We do have to worry. We have to worry about a person who thinks it's
perfectly fine to utter racist remarks to complete strangers. Who thinks
that because we are white, our perceptions match his. Who doesn't even
realize there is another way of looking at things. We asked this man
into our house to eliminate worrying about whether strangers working in our
apartment are openly homophobic. Instead, we had to deal with another,
unexpected kind of violation. Before the World Trade Center disaster, I
found his attitude obnoxious and distasteful; now, I am convinced that
it is outright dangerous.

"Here you are, a member of two minority groups--queer, Jewish--and you
find it acceptable to discriminate against people of color?" Barbara chided
him. "How would you like it if people didn't hire you simply because you are
homosexual or Jewish?"

"I've been in this business for 20 years," he said, matter-of-factly.
"Whenever I hired blacks, they didn't want to work. I had clients
complaining that their belongings were missing. I had to compensate
people for the thefts out of my pocket and I lost them as clients. I wouldn't
be in business today if I kept hiring blacks." He did not address Barbara's
questions.

While there was probably some validity to what he was saying about his
own personal experiences, he had no sense of how wrong it is to condemn a
whole race for the actions of a few. How would this painter like it if when
people found out he was gay, they assumed he killed young men and cut up
their body parts a la Jeffrey Dahmer? The day of the painter's visit,
Barbara had worked with high school teachers whose students are largely
African American. All she could think about as the painter spoke were
all the young men of color there who will never have a fair chance because
of prejudices like his.

The painter's attitude was not foreign to me. My father used to lump all
African Americans into the category of "shwartzehs," the derogatory
Yiddish word for black people. He, too, held "them" responsible for all sorts of
social problems--crime, white flight, his failure to land a secure job,
etc.

On the other hand, I have found that positive stereotyping can also
result in distorted perceptions. Countless times, I've surmised that gays and
lesbians are more progressive, more understanding or just plain better
people than heterosexuals because they know what it is like to be
oppressed. My faulty assumptions made the confrontation with the painter
even more painful for me than if he had been straight. I forget that we
are just like everyone else and there are bigots among us, too, as well as
bad friends and bad lovers.

Needless to say, we didn't hire this painter. We cast a net for one with
a more inclusive color palette and found a straight Italian guy from
Brooklyn. Whatever his views of working with people of color or working
for lesbians, they did not come up in our conversations. And that was fine
with us. However, lest one think this story had a happy ending, we found out
from our neighbors that he constantly screamed and belittled one of his
workers, a Pakistani guy.

Gay, straight. Italian, Jewish. Bigotry is as pervasive as the smell of
burning rubber and plastic and molten metal that still emanates from the
World Trade Center site three months after September 11. We have to do
better than this. Our lives depend on it.

© Michele Forsten 2002