It's not racist if it's true

Readers of my dearly departed livejournal (hi Mom!), will recall that I wrote about being Indian in England, and how it was a little weird being the approximate equivalent of black in the U.S. Barcelona has a lot of South Asians, who seem to be apportioned among the jobs of restaurant owner, bodega owner, beer-seller, and drug dealer, at least in my sketchy neighborhood. I learned what that meant for me on my first night. I was with Jon Wolff and his friends in a locked park, and we found a set of keys by a statue, and then a plastic bag shoved into a crevice. We were joking about the meaning of the keys, and a very nice, fairly drunk Dutch girl said, "It's probably drugs. The Pakis hide their drugs all kinds of places." I didn't really have any desire to be offended, or to make a big deal out of it -- my first reaction to "Paki," as Rushdie says in Satanic Verses, is to think it's spelled "pachy," and associate it with elephants. But I was also uncomfortable, and my body language presumably showed it. We were in a group, so I hoped that the conversation would just move on, but Charlotte continued, in what I thought was an unaware fashion, but which turned out to be far too aware. "I mean, it is true, so many of them in Barcelona are drug dealers . . ." Beat. To me: "Where are you from, originally?" Why not, having put your foot in your mouth, just stop talking? Is it really necessary to then ask someone else, "did you notice how I put my foot in my mouth? Because I think you did, but I'm not totally positive." But Charlotte, if you ever read this, don't worry about it -- we're square. It was just funny.