Page 319 - The Social Animal

7

Prejudice

A white policeman yelled, “Hey, boy! Come here!” Somewhat
bothered, I retorted: “I’m no boy!” He then rushed at me, in-
flamed, and stood towering over me, snorting, “What d’ja say,
boy?” Quickly he frisked me and demanded, “What’s your
name, boy?” Frightened, I replied, “Dr. Poussaint, I’m a physi-
cian.” He angrily chuckled and hissed, “What’s your first name,
boy?” When I hesitated he assumed a threatening stance and
clenched his fists. As my heart palpitated, I muttered in pro-
found humiliation,“Alvin.” He continued his psychological bru-
tality, bellowing, “Alvin, the next time I call you, you come right
away, you hear? You hear?” I hesitated. “You hear me, boy?” 1

Hollywood would have had the hero lash out at his oppressor and
emerge victorious. But when this demoralizing experience actually
happened, in 1971, Dr. Poussaint simply slunk away, humiliated—or,
in his own words, “psychologically castrated.” Feelings of helpless-
ness, powerlessness, and anger are the harvest of being the constant
target of prejudice.
Nowadays, most people think that stories like Dr. Poussaint’s are
old news. If any white guy behaved in a racist or sexist way today, peo-
ple believe, the media would be on them in a nanosecond, followed
by protests or lawsuits and inevitable public apologies. When, in the
fall of 2006, Republican senatorial candidate George Allen called a
young man of East Indian descent a “macaca” (a pejorative for blacks
that means “monkey”), he was excoriated in the press, and he proba-
bly lost the election because of it. In a similar career-imperiling