You'll be the first to go.

I went to a local ACME store to pick up a few things yesterday and had a rather unpleasant encounter with one of their employees. I was wandering a bit aimlessly, since I’d never been in that particular supermarket before, when I heard a woman in an ACME shirt saying something about “we need a lot of love in this country” and then, something about “these foreigners.”

Longtime readers know that I’m not good with public confrontations. I’ve written about some incidents like that, such as the Texas Longhorns fan who asked me about the Aggies – but used a homophobic slur instead – and where my pushback could have been a lot clearer and more forceful. I don’t exactly know why I was ready to fight yesterday, but I did.

I repeated “Foreigners?” to her, and she nodded and said “yeah,” to which I said, “so you have a problem with foreigners?” I think she realized then that I might not be an ally – nor was the employee she was ranting to, who, as far as I could tell, was trying to do his job and ignoring her as best as he could – and she said something along the lines of “well, not all foreigners.”

That sent me right over the edge, and because I was so livid I’m not totally sure what I said next. I remember saying that I’m descended from someone who came here illegally (my grandfather, from Italy, who then fought in the U.S. Army in World War II against his own native country), and that my in-laws are also immigrants to the U.S., and that I found what she said deeply offensive. I also pointed out that there were likely customers in the store who were not born here. What I should have said was that she works with people who migrated to the U.S. – after this argument, I walked into the next aisle, heard two employees speaking Spanish, and asked a question of a third who had a strong accent that I couldn’t place (and won’t hazard a bad guess). But I was fuming and let my emotions get the better of me. She offered a pretty empty apology, and then the other employee, who turned out to be some kind of manager, caught me elsewhere in the store, thanked me for saying something, and apologized profusely, saying he’d talk to her about it. I told him he didn’t owe me any apology and as far as I could tell he wasn’t even listening to her.

I know I could have handled that better, especially if I’d kept my anger more in check; I was completely rattled by the whole exchange and ended up wandering around the store for a minute or two just to bring my heart rate down. I’m just so done with the twin viruses of bigotry and ignorance that have infected our country and so many of our putative allies. I can’t prevent anyone from thinking dumb or racist or xenophobic shit. I can only push back when they say this garbage in public. I’m hoping that the next time I hear something like this it’s a little easier for me to speak up and keep my cool, because I have no hope that this behavior or the sentiments behind it are going away any time soon.

--

‘Merica.

Over at the Athletic, I wrote a piece leading into the wild-card round on the rookies likely to make the biggest impact in the playoffs, and before that wrote about my hypothetical BBWAA award ballots and did my annual list of players I got wrong. I also held a Q&A at the Athletic last Friday, the 4^th.

For Paste, I reviewed the board game Let’s Go to Japan, which is one of my favorites of the year for its gameplay and the way its theme works so well with the mechanics.

Over on the dish, I reviewed Jasper Fforde’s novel Red Side Story, Charlie Jane Anders’ YA trilogy Unstoppable, Adam Hochschild’s World War I history To End All Wars, and Dr. Cassie Holmes’s self-help book on time management Happier Hour; as well as the board games Águeda: City of Umbrellas, Undergrove (from the designer of Wingspan), and Seers Catalog. I also posted a new music playlist for September and my usual weekly link roundup this past Saturday.

Thanks for reading.

Keith