"The propaganda wing of Big Vacation tells everyone that vacations are these reinvigorating and reforming respites."

"They’re where Stella got her groove back. Where you can find Parts Unknown. Where you’re supposed to eat, pray and love until you finally forget Sarah Marshall. Unfortunately, I have not enjoyed them the way I’ve been told they should be enjoyed. I usually have a good time, but I’ve had a good time at Arby’s.... I’ve grappled with this vacation angst for years, questioning why they just never felt great to me, and wondering if a combination of writer person brain worms and PTBD (post-traumatic brokeness disorder) made me unable to truly appreciate them."

Writes Damon Young in "Everyone’s vacationing wrong" (WaPo).

"For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters that carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A.B.C. may read our natures."

Wrote the physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne in Religio Medici (1643), quoted in the Wikipedia article "Physiognomy." And in his Christian Morals (circa 1675):

Since the Brow speaks often true, since Eyes and Noses have Tongues, and the countenance proclaims the heart and inclinations; let observation so far instruct thee in Physiognomical lines ... we often observe that Men do most act those Creatures, whose constitution, parts, and complexion do most predominate in their mixtures. This is a corner-stone in Physiognomy ... there are therefore Provincial Faces, National Lips and Noses, which testify not only the Natures of those Countries, but of those which have them elsewhere.

For a modern example of physiognomy as a science, Wikipedia points to "Kim Jong-Un: The Face Tells All" (preserved in the Wayback Machine)("So as soon as Kim Jong-un's photo was revealed, South Korean physiognomists got right down to business analyzing every feature to gauge his personality and character").

"We are happy to welcome this block party to Hilldale although would have been grateful to be involved in the organization of it so that we could prepare the site to receive a crowd and work to insure that all COVID-related standards of mass gatherings were met."

Said a spokeswoman for Hilldale Shopping Center (here in Madison), quoted in "Hilldale Shopping Center closes stores ahead of protest" (Wisconsin State Journal).

Organizers in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in Madison and Milwaukee said they came together at the shopping center in an effort to educate patrons on the plight faced by Black people in America. But the normally bustling shopping center was void of customers as businesses shut their doors at about 2:30 p.m., prior to the kickoff of the event....

Organizers said they were told by shopping center management that the stores were closed to accommodate the block party, but organizers were skeptical. They said shopping center security tried to block them from setting up a sound system and grill outside the Apple Store.

Oh! They felt unwelcome. And the customers of the stores didn't work as a captive audience for this proffered "education." They all went home! There was even free food... but who would eat protester-prepared food in the time of social-distancing?!

“We need to learn how to stop ignoring people’s voices and listen to them,” Frank Nitty, a community organizer from Milwaukee]. “People aren’t trying to be violent, they’re trying to be heard.”

Remember yesterday, we were talking about an essay by Damon Young, "You Want to Talk About Racism? Pay Me/And even then, maybe not"? Young, a black author of a book about racism, wanted white people to realize that when he's out and about in his ordinary life — "maybe I’m out walking, shopping or playing with my children" — he doesn't want people using that as an opportunity to talk to him about racism — even if they think they mean well and they're participating in this conversation about race we keep hearing about.

The feeling is mutual, it seems. The shoppers at Hilldale cleared out immediately. Now, part of that was probably concern about potential violence. And, frankly, Nitty's statement that his group isn't "trying to be violent" is not terribly reassuring. We've seen peaceful protests devolve into violence. How did the violence happen? I'm willing to believe the protesters, most of them, were not "trying to be violent," but then windows got broken and chaos happened. It's enough to make anybody who was at Hilldale to buy an iPad at the Apple Store or a flimsy blouse as Anthropologie to get in the car and go home.

But quite aside from the fear of disorder (and the lack of interest in street food in the time of coronavirus), few of us want someone to come up to us when we're "out walking, shopping or playing with [our] children" and force us into a conversation — or an "educational" lecture — about race.

I put the quote from the Hilldale spokesperson in the headline because it's so guarded and bullshitty.

"I guess I understand the compulsion to find somewhere to engage this national conversation... The white people who do this..."

"... don’t realize (or maybe just don’t give a damn) that we’re on different timelines. You learned yesterday what white privilege means? Great! Welcome to 1962. This, however, doesn’t mean I need to engage you about it today. Or tomorrow. Or ever. And most important, maybe I’m out walking, shopping or playing with my children, or out just, I don’t know, staring at a fire hydrant because I want to give myself a break from writing about, from speaking about, from thinking about and from raging about racism, and you’re asking me to work for you for free. And that’s what it is: work. Free labor. An absolution device for your conscience, provided by me, shipped for free. There’s nothing inherently valuable for me out of that exchange. I don’t have a bucket list. But if I did, a 17-minute conversation about lynching, while in line for ice cream, wouldn’t be on it."

From "You Want to Talk About Racism? Pay Me/And even then, maybe not" by Damon Young, author of "What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir In Essays" (NYT).

Conversation is not like money. Handing someone a conversation is not like handing them money, because money is neutrally useful and if it's given to you, doesn't take any of your time. But a conversation isn't just a giving. It's a taking of someone's time, and it's always about something specific. That person has some power over how the conversation goes and can try to move it somewhere other than where you had in mind, but that requires time and effort, and who are you to demand that from them? Did you think about that? Or do you imagine yourself to be a wanted gift?

I looked up where Young lives, because I was trying to picture a place where people see a black man, recognize him as an author of a book about race, and think it's perfectly okay to make an effort to engage him on the topic of race, and have a conversation right there on the street at that moment, because that's where they encountered him. He lives in Pittsburgh.

I'm giving this post my tag "etiquette." Don't people understand etiquette?!

"So the guy in charge of 'Greek' life on campus is worried about cultural appropriation?"

My favorite comment on a WaPo column (by Catherine Rampell) titled "A fraternity was told it was ‘appropriating culture.’/Administrators won’t say which."

I think it's actually pretty clear what the appropriation was. The fraternity was doing a badminton-based fundraiser and it called it "Bad(minton) and Boujee." There's a rap song "Bad and Boujee" and "boujee" is a distinctive spelling of the shortened form of "bourgeois" that's used as an insult and more commonly spelled — if anybody tries to write it — "bougie." The spelling "boujee" is actually good because it's phonetic and it keeps people from pronouncing it "boogie," which actually is a racial slur!

Here's the OED entry for the noun "boogie":

U.S. slang. offensive.

A derogatory term for an African American.

1923 Confessions of Bank Burglar vii. 40 Three coons came into the barn..the three of them took a drink and then put the bottle in the hay... At noon the ‘boogies’ came in for another shot.
1925 Flynn's 1 Aug. 572/1 One of the cops..caught two boogies. We picked up the two hard-lookin' young negroes.
1925 Flynn's 1 Aug. 572/1 The boogie jus' got up and grinned.
1937 E. Hemingway To have & have Not iii. xiv. 205, I seen that big boogie there mopping it up.

Anyway, the spelling "boujee" is associated with black people, especially when used in connection with the rap song title. Here's the video of the song. Once you've watched that, you'll have to stoop to faux naivety to act like you don't know what the university was talking about. It's a separate question whether cultural appropriation is bad and whether it's something universities should patrol and how clearly they need to speak when they do.

Anyway, I'm just getting up to speed on the word "boujee," and I found a helpful blog post by Damon Young at Very Smart Brothas, "THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BOUGIE, BOUJEE, AND BOURGIE/BOURGEOIS, EXPLAINED." Excerpt:

Bougie Black people are mostly urban, have completed some form of secondary education, and, most importantly, possess and are mindful of a certain urban/educated aesthetic. These are the people discussed and deconstructed in my Shit Bougie Black People Love series....

Anyway, Boujee describes the type of nouveau/hood rich that would totally, definitely cook up some dope with an Uzi.* They may have even made more money last year than their Bougie and Bourgie/Bourgeois counterparts, but the IRS would never, ever, ever know.

I plan to read more Damon Young. Like his newest post: "HOW MAD SHOULD I BE WHEN WHITE PEOPLE GREET AND TALK TO MY DOG WHEN I’M WALKING HIM INSTEAD OF ME?"

_______________________

* That's a reference to the lyrics to the song "Bad and Boujee": "My bitch is bad and boujee/Cookin' up dope with an Uzi."

ADDED: The word pronounced boujee or bougie seems to have originated in speaking about black people. The first printed examples — according to the (unlinkable) OED — were spelled "bourgie" (showing the connection to the word "bourgeois" more clearly). The OED defines this word as "slang (chiefly U.S., orig. in African-American usage). Chiefly depreciative... A person, esp. an African-American, regarded as bourgeois or middle-class, or as exhibiting characteristics attributed to the middle class, such as conventionality, materialism, or pretentiousness." Example:

1968 Negro Digest Nov. 64/2 Instead of recognizing differences among members but valuing the common cause, individuals will begin to call some people ‘Uncle Toms’, ‘bourgeois’ or ‘bourgies’, conservatives, foot-shufflers, black Caucasians and a variety of other uncomplimentary names.

It was also an adjective, again, "Originally used chiefly of and by African Americans." Example:

1968 Ramparts 26 Oct. 29/1 Silly-ass Kenneth Freeman..said some bull crap about ‘Huey P. Newton come from a bourgie family.’