“Yeah, so we just found out they are changing the entire course around, they are moving the front to the back and the back to the front, they are going to keep hole 9 as hole 9 but everything else is getting changed around.”

“Sounds like you have a real problem on your hands.”

“You’re telling me, the way the course use to be you would end at hole 9 and then go right by the clubhouse on your way to ten, now ten is going to be in the opposite direction of where you need to go to get drinks and food, the set up is a major inconvenience and they just up and did without getting all of the members input on it.  I was actually texting with three other members from the club, my partner from last year, Jimmy O, and another guy and none of us can believe it.”

“You know what you have on your hands, and this is quite serious, maybe you should be sitting down for this, it sounds like you, Jimmy O and the rest of the members of your country club have some real world white people problems, that’s right white people problems.  Maybe you want to get in touch with the Trump administration and see if he can do one of those executive orders requiring them to return the course to its original set up.”

Basically tha is a word for word replay of a conversation that I had with one of my law partners about his latest in a series of white people problems.  I probably shouldn’t give him too hard of a time since his membership at a country club allows me to play at his country club a couple times a year.  That being said, I did text him after our conversation and ask him how many black members they have and his response was “0”.  He claimed they had some black members a few years ago but at the present time their club is about as diverse Donald Trumps cabinet.  (I’m just guessing that it is primarily comprised of rich white guys, although there is at least one rich white women heading up the Department of Education, way to go Donald!)

Is it unusual that white people hang out with other white people?  Do African Americans want to join this predominantly white country club?  The reality is, as much as we are aiming for a diversified nation, we like hanging out with people who are like us because people like us allow us to remain in our comfort zone and are much easier to socialize with due to commonality.  For example, when Shirley and I had our first kid we still had a few couple friends who didn’t have kids.  We went out for dinner with one such couple shortly after Tod was born.  Haven’t heard back from them since.  Listen, I don’t like to hear about other people’s kids and I have kids of my own, there is no way people who don’t have kids want to hear about other people’s kids.  Furthermore, while I can stay off the topic of my kids, and even if I do discuss my kids, my stories are quite entertaining and humorous when it comes to discussing my kids so I could keep kidless people entertained. The same can not be said for most parents.  This makes it nearly impossible for couples with kids and kidless couples to integrate.

While I would like to think that in the bigger cities, and this seems to be how its portrayed in the movies and on television, there are plenty of opportunities for people with different backgrounds and racial make ups to become friends, the same doesn’t seem to be the case in West Michigan.  I play basketball at a number of different places in the area and have made acquaintances with a number of black guys who play hoops.  However, this has not grown into a situation where I can call any of them close friends.  Why is this?  It’s not that I don’t like any of them, they are all really nice and great guys, I think the main thing is that when I have hung out with some of them off the court, it is readily apparent that they are one thing I’m not, cool.  I have mentioned this before, but I think it speaks partially to the hurdle that remains in play when it comes to white black relationships.  Black guys are just cooler than white guys and when you are that much cooler or less cooler than someone it’s difficult to establish a meaningful relationship due to the overall inequity in coolness.  In a related note, there was one guy who use to play at one of my basketball locals, and he was by far the best player there, when we would have conversations I found it difficult to understand him for a couple of reasons, first of all I am hard of hearing and secondly he had a really low voice.  Most often if I didn’t catch what he said I would just laugh in response to his statement.  He could have told me his mother died or he was diagnosed with cancer and my response would have been to laugh if I didn’t understand him.

So my theory that black people are cool and white people aren’t can be easily validated.  Biggy Smalls = Cool

Ice Cube= Cool (at least until he started doing those crappy disney movies, those may have invalidated his coolness a bit)

Prince= Probably the coolest

Michael Jordan=Cool

Denzel Washington= Cool

Shaq= Cool

(I am not mentioning women here because it’s a well known fact women aren’t cool similarly to how they aren’t all that particularly funny)

So, thats just a smattering of the coolest black men out there.  Larry Bird was probably one of the best white basketball players of all time and he’s the antithesis of cool similarly Jon Stockton who spent his entire career playing point guard in the whitest place on earth, Salt Lake City,  is the center of the sun in his coolness factor.  Are there any white performers who are cool?  Yes, Justin Timberlake and Adam Levine, that’s the entire list right there.   Tom Brady, possibly the best quarter back of all time, handsome, married to a super model, but not cool, he can’t be cool he is a spokes person for UGGS (as much as I love UGGS, there’s nothing cool about them).  Likewise, Joe Montana, another phenomenal quarterback is a spokesperson for Skechers, you would never catch a black athlete touting the how the skechers shape up is able to accomplish the difficult task of keeping your ass toned.

Lastly, if you still aren’t convinced just compare how white guys dance to how black guys dance.

Realistically, while most of this is said in jest, there is a much higher likelihood that the coolness barrier will be broken down as our society continues to place an emphasis on eliminating color as a factor when it comes to who we choose to include in our social circles.  My kids attend a school where they offer financial assistance to prospective students and their school is located in an area where they can pull in a diversified student body.  When I was a kid all my classmates were white like me which had an impact on how I looked at the world.  The diversified student body has already had an impact on my kids, my oldest was watching Mary Poppins with Shirley and he asked “why aren’t there any brown people in this movie?”  His world view is one in which everyone is part of it, I never noticed the inequity in the makeup of the cast of Mary Poppins or any of the other children’s movies I viewed growing up white in a white suburb in one of the whitest parts of the United States.