Like some other writers for this website, I have a reputation for writing rude things about blacks. I have written rude things about whites, Hispanics, Asians, and Muslims, but being rude about blacks is one of our era’s unforgivable sins. Of course, what I write about blacks is true, but as Mark Twain pointed out, nothing astonishes people more than to tell them the truth. Deep down, everyone knows the truth about blacks, but a vital requirement for respectability is to pretend you don’t.The fact is, there are things to like about blacks—and I like them. They mostly have to do with lack of inhibition, a kind of cheerful spontaneity you don’t often find in whites. I have a half-Asian friend—a connoisseur of stereotypes—who thinks blacks and whites differ in that respect even more than they do in average IQ. As he puts it, whites act like Asians who have had a few drinks and blacks act like whites who have had a few drinks.

You see this in the easy way blacks talk to strangers. Sometimes I wear a hat—a black fedora in the winter or a panama in the summer—and I can count on compliments from blacks: “Love yo’ hat.” “Cool lid, man.” Mostly it’s from men but sometimes from women, too.

Blacks also have a knack for turning a moment with a stranger into a friendly exchange. If you are waiting for a bus in the summer, someone will turn to you and say “Sho is hot,” or “When izzat damn bus gonna come?” Educated blacks learn to be aloof, like whites, but lower-class blacks like to talk to whoever will listen, and there is charm in the way they share bits of their lives with you.[More]