The Only Friends Available

Recently, swaths of far right parties have been cropping up around the world to combat what is now known as PC/SJW culture. An evil leftist invention that is meant to feminize our men and put people of color or women in positions of power that they don’t deserve. Or at least that’s what many right leaning websites say. And frankly, it seems to be working. Brazil, the country with the biggest pride festival in the world, recently elected a man who said that he would beat up two men kissing in the street and rape women who deserve to be raped or even the AfD, a far-right party in Germany who wishes to set up holding camps abroad to stop migration all together, is gaining power.

California, specifically The Bay Area, has been a bubble in which I’ve been happily living in for around nine years now. The weather is nice as it never really goes over 90 degrees sans rare occasions and it never really goes below 50 either, most parts of it are relatively safe, San Francisco pride is one of the biggest pride parades in the world, and most of the people I’ve met have been liberal. Sure, there were quite a few conservatives, but it wasn’t Jair, let’s beat up “the gays”, Bolsonaro. So, I thought that I would never come across a person like this in real life and if I did, I have spent enough time dealing with trolls online to know what to do. 

My school is quite like The Bay Area. You know, sunny, liberal, and likes to flaunt our money around while the rest of The Bay Area struggles to get by and we look down on them screaming “HAHA, SCREW YOU, PEASANTS!” Side note: most students pay the full $45,000 tuition and somehow my school wrangles more money out of everyone’s pockets with 100% of families donating money to the school every year. My mom gives like $100 but some people legitimately add on another $1-5000 on top of the $45,000 tuition. Okay, so the other kids at my school are rich, living in their lavish mansions and chilling in their jacuzzis until midnight, but that doesn’t make them assholes… right?

Well, it’s history class and I’ve just gotten back an essay I’ve spent a shocking amount of time slavery over. “Comparing and Contrasting Chinese and African American Immigration to California”. Not the most interesting subject, but it was one of the last essays of the year so I needed to do well on it. And it paid off! I got a 95; yay me! I’m basically skipping up those stairs to the cafeteria, throwing open those double doors, and letting the comforting smell of eggs and bacon guide me over to my friend’s table. 

This friend was actually the only person there even though he wasn’t actually sitting down yet. He’s a really smart Indian kid who got a 36 on the ACT even though he routinely tells me that he can’t do anything remotely English or Reading related. We all know that kid. Anyway, he asks me how I did on the essay, I tell him I got a 95, and his awkward smile quickly turns into a frown. You could see the creases form on his face as he looked at me in confusion. Then, as soon as it was there, it was gone and he smiled again as if he suddenly figured out the solution to the problem that was blaring inside his head a moment ago. 

And he did.

He placed and arm on my shoulder and squeezed lightly. “I don’t want this to sound… racist or anything, Xavier. But you do realize that you only did well on that essay because you’re black, right?” 

Imagine you’re me, okay? For a split second, your mind just freezes over and you stare at him with that same look of confusion he gave you earlier. You realize the reason he was so confused was because he couldn’t fathom how you were smart enough to get such a good grade at this school. The school you had to test into and beat out hundreds of other kids with much more money than you. I mean, the school loses money whenever you sign up for another year. So… Why would they pick you? I mean, he’s right. You’re not that smart, you’re not charismatic so you have no idea how you got through the interview process, and he’s been your friend since sixth grade so he knows everything about you. Maybe deep down you knew what he said was wrong, but even deeper down you don’t want to lose a friend. You’re too scared of being alone and he’s one of the only friends you have. So you laugh. You laugh and tell him that he’s right. That you’re just some stupid black kid who got their grade saved by a teacher who liked them. A teacher who was too scared to give the black kid a bad grade on an essay about race.

I believed him. A different friend had said something similar a few months earlier. He recently had been accepted to Cornell and told me that I should apply too. I joking reminded him of my poor performances in math and how that would probably prevent me from going since it brought my GPA down but it seemed like he actually believed in me. He told me that it was fine if I wasn’t good at math because since I was black, I could get into any college I wanted without really being good at anything.

That’s how affirmative action works.

I was being gifted a free path through life that I didn’t even know existed. While everyone else stayed up until two in the morning studying for their next physics test or spent hours on the weekend going over vocabulary words with their strict parents, I didn’t even have to do anything. How did I get into this school? Luck? Yeah, that was probably it. They just needed that token black kid to look good in school photos for “diversity”. 

I like to think that they had good reasons for saying those things. Maybe they didn’t mean for it to come out that way, but the reality is that they still thought the only way I was able to be successful was because of my race. You can’t police people’s thoughts, I know that, but the fact that they thought like that in the first place is problematic. I’ve met more and more people like this and I can never exactly tell them that they’re wrong. Something just feels… well, wrong, about it but I’m too scared to be alone so that Indian kid and the guy at Cornell are still my friends to this day. Both of these people are self described liberals; especially the guy at Cornell because he has told me several times how much he dislikes conservatives. It’s almost as if they are fine with tearing others down as long as it doesn’t involve people like them because then it would hurt a lot more. The more you distance yourself from what you’re saying, the less it hurts. It has created this society in which people will do anything to feel the slightest bit of superiority.  A society where my school friends are allowed to playfully compare their scores and figure out who performed the best but as soon as I enter the conversation, they immediately expect me to do poorly and if I don’t it’s because some outside force is giving the black kid a helping hand. What other choice do I have?