Fakin', frontin' and stuntin'

I'm writing a book tentatively titled "No, I Don't Wash My Hair Everyday -- and Answers to Other Questions You'll Never Ask Me."\nLook for it next to author Phillip J. Milano's 2002 book "Why Do White People Smell Like Wet Dogs When They Come in Out the Rain."\nThe "white guy from the Midwest" recently authored a book containing a plethora of politically incorrect questions and answers -- a print version of his Web site, www.yforum.org, where folks anonymously ask all those out-there and not-so-out-there questions that would otherwise warrant one quick jab to the larynx. Questions include, "What do black people mean when they call someone 'high-yellow?'" and "Why do gay men have lisps?" \nOne columnist for the Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts Jr., said Milano is revolutionizing cross-cultural communications. \n"Buy it for a family member or friend, or use it in your classroom or diversity seminar. It's sure to create a buzz -- as well as a lasting conversation," suggests the yforum Web site.\nAnd if not a lasting conversation, then at least, a swift knock-out.\nWhile folks like Pitts herald Milano as an unorthodox, pro-diversity, cross culture communications revolutionary, some reviews cited him as "some dumb ass white guy."\nNot too far-removed from that same "dumb ass white guy" who's come up in conversations I've had with my friends -- convos that usually involve a classroom or dorm setting in which a white guy asks a question or makes a comment about black girls having attitudes or affirmative action being reverse discrimination (two very different topics, both equally worthy of debate).\nNot too long ago -- cough, cough ... last semester ... -- comments or questions like those would have ruffled a homegirl's feathers. But nowadays, my theory is that a silent room isn't necessarily a peaceful room; rather it's one in which folks are just too afraid to speak their minds.\nLast semester, I took a black politics class. We discussed everything from affirmative action to whether black politicians' political campaigns could be separated from their racial identity. And not once in that class was there ever any true opposition. We were one sway away from joining hands and singing Kumbaya.\nIt's not that people weren't encouraged to speak their minds; it was that they were afraid to. It seems everybody can recite the politically correct, socially-accepted answers to any of the nation's most "relevant" racially-charged questions.\nBut it's the little stuff where we slip up. \nThis morning on the bus, somebody asked me (in a rather rhetorical way), "Why do white boys have a proclivity to wear shorts 80 percent of the year?" It's these kinds of questions, based on day-to-day observations with little research that people want answered.\nIt's, also these kind of questions that will never make it into the classrooms setting, mostly because lecture halls have become so politically correct that there's no place for not knowing. Granted, the aforementioned "shorts" question was more cutting than curious -- people really want to know the whens, whats, wheres and whys of race, gender and class. \nThe problem is that we've hurled ourselves into the age of fakin,' frontin' and stuntin' -- and somehow not knowing has been deemed politically incorrect. And in addition, those who know and do not agree with the consensus will often be verbally tagged with the under-the-breath, back-of-the-classroom "dumb ass." \nMaybe Milano's questions seem a bit irrelevant. But the truth is maybe if we could get the little stuff out of the way -- like uncovering the human in each other, we'd finally end up in a good starting place.\nIf I ever see Phillip J. Milano roaming these roads, I'll have to hit him with the bear hug. Not because he's picked up the slack and gotten somebody else to answer that "What does 'ashy' mean?'" question. But because, doggone it, I can finally admit -- I have a couple questions to ask, too.