BLACK, WHITE & EASY

BLACK ELEPHANT

 “Man, I been waiting for you to come,” Easy greeted me as I joined him on the bench.  “It’s nice as hell out here today.”

It was a beautiful Thursday evening.  The weather seemed just about as perfect as one could ask for on a mid-July evening.  There remained about two good hours of sunlight left in the day.  The park was alive with youngsters, old heads, and everyone in between.  The game on the court was going strong.  The birds and squirrels seemed overly active.  I was in a good mood, and my sitting friend appeared cheerful and anxious to receive my company. 

“What’s up, Easy?” I returned the greeting.

“Ain’t nothing up but the price of beer,” he said.  “You know they went up ten cents on the price of beer around the corner?  Now I gotta adjust my beer budget.  That’s liable to cost me a couple a extra dollars a week.  I might have to give it up.”

“You know that you’re not going to give up drinking beer just because the price went up a dime,” I said.

“You damn right I ain’t.”  He flashed a broad smile.  “I’m liable to drink more because it’s more valuable now.  You know the more something cost, the more you want it.  Like Sly and the Family Stone useta sing, ‘The higher the price, the nicer the nice.’”

“People tend to think that way,” I agreed.

“Specially Black people,” he said.  “You put a high price tag on something, and they think they gotta have it.  It don’t matter what it is.  Just say that it costs a lot of money, and they think you ain’t nothing unless you got it.”

Easy held out both hands.  “You could have dookie in one bucket and manure in other one.  You tell everybody that a bucket of dookie is five dollars, and everybody gonna say, ‘Who would wanna pay five dollars for some shit?’  But you tell everybody that the bucket of manure cost five hundred dollars, and all the Black folks will be saying, ‘I gotta get me some of that five hundred dollar shit!’  Negroes is fools for a price tag.”

“You make a very strong case,” I said.

“I would rather have a very strong case of beer.  A case of beer seems a lot better than a case about shit.”  He laughed.

“Look at cars,” Easy said.  “They could make a twelve thousand dollar car and a forty thousand dollar car on the same assembly line.  They would be using the same machines, the same workers, the same materials, everything the same.  The only thing that would be different would be the name and the price.  The cars would drive the same, have the same type of problems, and last the same amount of time.  But you know what a Negro gonna be saying?  He gonna be saying that the twelve thousand dollar car is a piece of shit, and the forty thousand dollar car is the royal shit.  And ain’t nothing gonna be different but the price and what they gonna charge you for repairs.”

“That’s how the marketing game is played,” I noted.

“Well, I ain’t playing that game!”  Easy frowned.  “It sounds like a dumb game to me.  Those rural guys on Wall Street is always playing games with the urban masses.”