What about blonde?

My uncle used to tell a joke about Jesse Jackson, a pilot, and a boy scout in an about-to-crash airplane with two parachutes, where the first punchline of the joke is “the smartest n***** in the world just jumped out of this airplane with my knapsack”. The second punchline, in response to “what happened to Jesse Jackson,” is “who cares?” (We could never get uncle to stop using the n-word, and I’m sure now that he is in heaven with You, You are having similar trouble with him.)

Anyhow, not too long ago, I heard the same parachute joke reworked with blondes as the subject, replacing Jesse Jackson. I say if it’s not politically correct to judge black people on the color of their skin, it’s not politically correct to be prejudiced against blondes either. While I would personally never date a blonde, I don’t think it’s right to ridicule and stereotype someone for the way they were born.

That was truly profound.

I have often noticed that Arabs say their own hair color is black, but they are hard pressed to describe the hair color of a blond, redhead, or even ordinary European brown hair. For a long time I thought that was just because my Arabic tutor was color-blind, but then I noticed other Arabs struggling for that hair description in Arabic that means “not black”.

One family I stayed with bypassed the issue altogether and when they sang songs about me, sang about my “white arms”. I thought I had shocked them by wearing a past-the-elbow tee shirt in the house instead of covering everything to the wrist as they do in the countryside, but now I see they were struggling to describe that 5D effect.