The Night I Was Called “Nigger” (Twice)

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Illustration by the author

3,732 words

In November of 2009, I had been living in St. Louis for nine years, and my apartment complex was in a suburb bordering the city. It had gone through a rough patch before I signed my lease, cleaning out drug dealers and such. My years there were quiet and orderly. The rent was reasonable, the location a ten-minute drive from my downtown job as a security guard, and the apartment was a cozy one-bedroom.

On November 21 at 10:00 PM, I went to do my laundry as usual. The small in-complex laundromat was empty. I went back to my apartment to wait for the rinse cycle to end.

There had been problems lately with outsiders coming in to use the laundromat. It wasn’t unusual for me to find strangers there, kids from the neighborhood messing around, or a car with unknown people unloading laundry through the door. I asked one man about this, and said “his friend lives here, and she said it’s okay.

It wasn’t, as the lease strictly stated. The new manager, whom we’ll call Grace, was a cheerful older woman trying to be all things to all people, and assured me she was working on it. She was nice enough, but seemed to lack the force needed to solve the problem.

Next door to my apartment a black man had moved in. He was quiet enough, but a couple of weeks before, a black woman moved in with him, and she was noisy, argumentative, and swore constantly at him. Through my wall, I could easily hear her constant attacks on the man. She had a streak of profanity and carping that was typical of many black women; complete, utter nastiness and slimy insults to which the man weakly grunted. It was the kind of watered-down stuff we laugh about on TV or a movie, but the reality, especially next door, is disgusting. 

At 10:45, I went back to get my laundry, which was a half block from my apartment. There had been a second laundromat around the corner, but management closed it, mostly because outsiders kept breaking in to use the machines or rob the coin box. It was ostensibly going to be converted into an apartment; rather, it was simply locked and remained dark.

When I came to the laundromat, two black girls, aged about 12, sat on the laundromat’s lone bench. It wasn’t unusual for people to be with their laundry, but when I used my key, it wouldn’t open. After a couple of attempts, I knocked on the door and asked the girls to open it, which people inside always did. They refused, staying on the bench, saying Grace told them not to open the door to strangers. I asked them again to open the door. I showed my key and driver’s license, saying I lived there, pointed to the spinning machine, and needed to get my laundry. They wouldn’t budge. I shook the doorknob. “Open the damned door,” I said. They refused.

From around the corner came the black woman and man who lived next to me. The woman strut quickly. She demanded to know what I was doing. I told them my laundry was in the washer, and I wanted to get it, and the girls wouldn’t open the door. The man shook his fist, pointed his finger at me, and told me to shut up. I told them again I lived here, showed them my key, and said I just wanted to get my laundry. The woman angrily pushed her way past the man and said the girls were told not to open the door. I showed them my key again. The woman said it might not work. I showed her it did. She was angry, and tried to open the door with her key, but it wouldn’t open because the girls locked the door from the inside. 

When I said their locking the door was why it wasn’t working, she narrowed her eyes and shot out a stream of profanity to me I’ll only describe as aural vomit. 

The woman looked inside, and her voice switched from abusive acid to saccharine talk-to-the-kitten. “Open the door,” she cooed, “come onnnn, little babies, open that dooooor. No one gonna hurt you, sweet little baaaabies. Open uuuup.”

The girls finally unlocked the door. The woman turned to me, eyes glaring. I said I’d lived here since 2001 and never had any problems getting my laundry until now.

“Hey, you just shut up,” the man shouted, “you shut up, nigger.”

“Look,” I said, “I just want my laundry.”

The woman slammed the door shut and switched in a second. “Your attitude ain’t helping none, M********er,” she sassed me and exploded in filth as she shook her fist.

“Okay, I’ll call the police,” I said, and walked back to my apartment. 

“You go ahead, M**********r,” the man bellowed and clenched his fists, “you go ahead and call whoever you want, nigger.”

I turned. “I’m not a nigger, I’m a honky.”

Back at my apartment, I called the police and explained the situation to the dispatcher, who said a police officer was on the way.

Five minutes later, a police car pulled up. I told the officer I was the one who called, and asked him to go with me. He barely looked at me. When I went to open the passenger door, he drove off without me. It was a three hundred yard walk, and when I got there, he was out of the car, smoking a cigarette. The man, woman, and girls were with him, as was Grace, and a younger black man in dreadlocks I hadn’t seen before. When I arrived, the young man glared at me, eyes set and cold, nostrils flaring. 

The policeman leaned against his cruiser and puffed. “These people told me that you threatened those girls.”

“No, I didn’t. I just want my laundry, and–“

“Quiet. I want to hear both sides,” the cop said, puffing away. He looked bored, indifferent, and slouched against his cruiser. “They said the girls had been told to lock the door to protect them from strangers.” The officer asked the girls if I had threatened them. They said I kicked at the door and called them niggers.

“That’s a lie,” I said calmly, and began to give my side when the policeman interrupted me, almost yawning as he ignored anything I said. “Look,” he said, “threatening children is a serious offense, and you got to remember, they have more rights than you do. Their father,” he pointed to the young man, nostrils flaring, “could have you arrested. I don’t know what happened because I wasn’t here when this occurred, and I got more important things to do than this.” He took another drag. Grace stood back, looking like a deer in the headlights. And of course, the swearing, furious blacks were calm and collected. 

“Everyone needs to calm down,” the policeman said, “and you need to apologize.” His tone made it clear things would happen if I didn’t. I realized then that calling the police was the worst thing I could have done. This bored, dull-eyed cop seemed ready to lock me up as he puffed away on his cigarette.

I looked at the black man. “He called me a nigger. Twice.” Said not in anger but as a statement of fact. Everyone stared. “I’m sorry if I upset them.”

The woman’s voice almost cracked as if she was ready to cry and found de land. “God bless you, officer! God bless you!”

The cop showed no emotion. “Okay,” he said to me, “you can get your laundry.”

Grace finally spoke, asking if my key worked. Everyone seemed obsessed with my key working, and for the third freaking time, I showed it did. She went into the laundry room, and as the policeman went to his car, I turned.

“Do you mind waiting here until I get my laundry? That’s why I called.”

He shrugged and folded his arms as I collected my laundry. When I left, the girls went back inside and sat down on the bench. As I was leaving, the policeman got into his car and drove off.

Back in my apartment, I was pretty nervous and had a glass of wine to calm down. 

The next morning I went to the office to see Grace. She was all smiles and very apologetic — “yeah,” I thought, “you could have said something last night.” She said she was just wanting to protect the girls, who were staying with the woman, although I wanted to ask what two 12-year-old girls were doing hanging around a laundromat at 10:45 PM.

I spoke to my brother about it, who at that time was a policeman.

I asked him if I could be arrested.

“No,” he said. “If the officer wanted to arrest you, he would have done so, and as he said, it was your word against theirs. He probably just did a NR — no report — thinking ‘here’s some more nigger BS I gotta look into.’ But you shouldn’t have lost your temper.”

“I was angry. I wanted my laundry, I live there, and didn’t like being locked out, especially by strangers.”

He ignored this. “Also, you shouldn’t use a laundromat at night. Also,” he sighed, “you need to move out.”

But I didn’t, partly for financial reasons. “Moving out” is easy to say, but rents can be a killer if you want the right, safe neighborhood. As for the man and woman, there were more arguments next door in the dirtiest language I ever heard. The man only grunted. 

One day, at the mailbox, I said hello to him. As always, he kept his eyes down, barely speaking. The only time he ever came to life was that night, clenching his fists and calling me a nigger. Otherwise, he almost seemed catatonic, taking all the verbal crap the woman dished out to him, and she gave him the kitchen sink with her nasty, foul, mouth. 

In early February, I heard a particularly filthy afternoon of her swearing at him, and the police came. I looked out the window, and saw those two girls in a cab, peeking out, blank stares just like I’d seen in the laundromat that night. Two cops hustled the woman out, screaming and swearing at them as they yanked her along and bustled her into their cruiser. I never saw any of them again. The man left shortly afterwards. As for the girl’s “father,” who was so furious at me and “could have had me arrested”? He skipped town to go to South Carolina shortly after that night at the laundromat, of course not paying his rent. He didn’t say a word to his daughters, if that’s who they were.

As for Grace, a week after the incident, I noticed a new manager was in the office, a woman who was amiable but not quite as chummy.

“Where’s Grace?” I asked.

“She’s no longer with us,” the woman said.

“She was transferred?”

“She’s no longer with us.”

That means she got fired. So much for that. I also noticed the maintenance man working on the laundromat door. He took out the inside lock. “They told me they wanted it out right away. Don’t know why we didn’t do this before,” he said to me, “a waste of time having it there.”

The new manager cracked down on people in the laundromat, and there were no more outsiders bringing in their wash. Tenants were reminded they’d be evicted if caught letting someone doing this.

I stayed at this apartment complex until two years ago, and moved a half-mile away to a much better place, although I stayed at the old place for nine more years after that night. True, blacks could be pests, but I outlasted them, as they were always getting kicked out, usually for not paying the rent. It almost seems to be a racial characteristic. 

A year ago, the complex, now two-thirds black, was having a run of trouble, from increased police and ambulance calls to stopped-up toilets, usually from tenants (guess which race?) flushing their Kotex or garbage down the bowl. New management took over the complex and rehabbed all the apartments in a new, “contemporary” style with in-unit washers and other appliances. This raised the rent two to three hundred dollars as they sought a higher-income tenant, mostly “urban professional” types. The remaining blacks were simply evicted, week by week, along with whites who couldn’t pay higher rent. No appeal of any sort. Out you went. The laundry room is now locked and darkened.

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You can buy Greg Johnson’s Confessions of a Reluctant Hater here

So, what are my impressions?

At the time, I let it all roll off, because I had a busy schedule, I was in a play, it was Christmas season, and had a lot going on. I didn’t dwell on it. After all, it’s TNB.

Blacks were, and are, messy, argumentative people, and that night I walked into their shit. I think again how many black women are the worst. They’re just nasty. That woman’s language and tone were frankly, savage, and you see a dozen examples on YouTube. . . at least before they get shut down. 

As for the girls, they lied, as blacks do. I did hit my hand on the door, but, goddammit, I lived there, I paid my rent, I’m a vet, I’m a security guard, I’m responsible, a good tenant, and I had wanted to get my laundry, like I did every night, week after week, year after year. And they blew in, caused trouble, and blew out. Many are simply unstable people.

My brother said that when you’re questioning blacks, you shouldn’t ask them where they live, because most can’t connect to a stable home. You always ask “who are you staying with?” Then you get some workable answers. 

I’d say this behavior is tribal, but really, a tribe would be a step up. Modern society has created a new kind of pack mentality. A pack that lives partly on scavenging, partly on their political uses as mass voters, partly on government checks. This is our world, and it is “normal.” I think when Trump was defeated, we went back to being “normal,” and this is part of it. Some of white society, perhaps the majority, may grumble, but they’re used to it. 

As for being called nigger, it was kind of funny. I thought: this fist-shaking guy is so angry, he’s so furious at me, the nastiest, dirtiest, insult he could say to an enemy was nigger.

When I was called nigger — twice — the word lost all the taboo associations I had with it. After that night, I use it all the time. It’s not an insult, merely a description of reality. There’s no word that you use to insult whites that is as ugly and demeaning as that. I said I’m a honkie, but really, honkie is kind of funny, nowadays almost quaint; a leisure suit of insult. Cracker doesn’t really annoy me, even though it’s more for a Southerner, and I’m a Midwesterner. When I was younger, it had a good-natured sound to it. 

Anyway, cracker is dated. Since Trump came on the scene, they just say “white” and cut to the chase. This is all for the good. Now we know we our enemies don’t like the color of our skin. We’re hated not for what we believe or what we do, but for what we are. 

It would be better if we were called “goyim.” That would really make it really clear, but our enemies aren’t ready for that yet. Not until we go down to forty percent of the population; then they won’t have to be nice anymore. 

Recalling that night does bring out a flash of real hatred — vitriol and a quick pounding in my heart, a second where I want to kick something.

That hatred is for the cop and those six words.

“They have more rights than you.”

I think very long and hard on that cop leaning against his cruiser, puffing away on his cigarette, bored and lazy. . . but ready to lock me up if I didn’t toe the line. He was the black folk’s muscle that night, and made no pretense of fairness. After that, I had a much more realistic view of police.

That’s why the riots and anarchy of last summer didn’t surprise me, especially seeing the police line up and do nothing. Yes, they were ordered to. . . I get it. But I think there’s not a great amount of frustration of them not being “allowed to do their job.” They would just as soon go after us, like the jerk I called that night. He was ready to put the cuffs on me unless I ate crow, and I think, despite all the blue stripe flags and the calls to love and worship all them first responders, they’d piss on white people in a heartbeat.

I’m a security guard and I once worked in a police department, and I assure you many of them resent and despise civilians. If you read any Joseph Wambaugh novel, he accurately captures the psychological frustrations of police work, but also the sense they have of being an elite force ready to dish out “justice” to anyone.

The police in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone are content to arrest and kill whomever they’re told to. As the Narrator remarks, it’s no skin off their noses. Harold Covington noted in his white nationalist novel Freedom’s Sons that the police don’t precisely enforce the law, because there’s not much law to enforce. The police, his narrator says, are there to maintain the state in existence. That night, the cop was there not to protect me or see that peace was kept, but to make sure I understood how it is in America; multicultural America. They have more rights than you.

In Freedom’s Sons, Covington refers to a Northwest republic of whites where few laws are needed, since the republic is all white and Jew-free, purged of corporate types and lawyers. Our situation is one of a semi-controlled chaos as multicultural realities make society harder to govern. The police enforce chaos while at the same time trying to keep a lid on it lest it explode, because if the minorities and radical elements are allowed to run too wild, the system will crack. 

A lot of cops are caught in the same situation people were in in the sixties, when established order and a stable society were confronted and slowly being infiltrated by chaotic elements. It’s much like now, but the chaos is far more intense, and the infiltration is more openly directed from the elite. There is, it appears, a desire for social anarchy, and the police are duty-bound to enforce it and compel anarchy on the law-abiding if necessary.

Leaning against his cruiser, puffing away, this cop was ready to arrest me and destroy my life with all the concern that a frog has as he snaps up a bug.

What was made plain to me that night was that white people are meant to be screwed with by protected minorities and the police. The police understand we’re easy pickings. From recent events going from Rodney King to George Floyd, they know that, although they have a permission slip to come down on rambunctious blacks, they can be held accountable if the political cause de jour wants blood. But whites?

Look at me. Look at Daniel Shaver. In 2017, in Mesa, Arizona, police grabbed him on a bogus weapons charge (a gun he was showing someone was a pellet gun), forced him on his hands and knees, verbally abused him while holding him at gunpoint, all the while a terrified Shaver’s voice quivered as he begged not to be shot. . . and one of the cops shot and killed him. A jury let the cop go. We know that white people can be killed with no ramifications. 

Think of Portland, Oregon, of a recent video showing a crowd of Antifa shutting down traffic, silencing a white man who protested traffic being blocked off and, when he drew his gun, being disarmed and beaten by the Antifa, many of them armed with automatic rifles and wearing bulletproof vests, carrying radios. The police are forbidden to enter that zone. How long before Antifa extends this nationwide, and all those cops we support, the brave, noble, ‘first responders” line up, heavily armed, and simply turn away like guards in prisons do when the cons decide to beat or shiv someone who “has it coming?”

We’re white people. We’re the niggers now. And every day, the media tells us we “have it coming.” 

My brother would say I’m using extreme examples, but he’s an ex-cop and training instructor, and is happy to flash his badge and get a pass. Those of us without badges to flash are. . . well, niggers. I tell him of Shaver, of the above video. . . he’s heard of neither. Too busy dealing with his screwed-up family or reading his Time-Life series on World War Two (he really loves The Greatest Generation), or watching The Simpsons

Maybe that night the cop was just tired and bored, and I needed to move away anyway. But what happens when there’s nowhere to move away to? When the blacks follow you like a pack following a food source, or, more likely, the powers that be send that pack to live off you? No use calling the dog catcher.

Harold Covington also spoke of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the scene with the Knights who say Ni. White Nationalists, he said, are the knights who say nigger. I’ll be a White Nationalist. After all, no one ever called me Ni. 

But I have been called nigger. Twice.

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