By Johnny Bananas 

I woke up the other day with a bad case of racism.  Turns out I come by it honestly. I was born this way. 

This I learned from Bostonian Ibram X. Kendi, author of How To Be An Anti-Racist.  Still struggling to understand how I became a racist in the first place, given my best friend Orlando growing up with me in the inner city is black, and many of my friends put the IPOC in BIPOC, I sought the counsel of the new prophets of woke to help me face this existential crisis. 

The word from the ravaged and burning city streets of my hometown was this: you need a struggle session. 

Having no idea what this meant I went to the internet to find out. I struggled to get a good signal, as I live in the boonies, where there is a depressing lack of my BIPOC family for me to be racist toward. 

So I called customer service and struggled to get an actual person on the phone.  Once I did I struggled to explain what I was doing to the lady on the other end who also sounded like a racist.  This led to me struggling to explain to her why she needed to join me, which led to her not struggling to hang up the phone. 

Lonely, confused and without internet I struggled to find the keys to my car so I could drive to the library, where I reasoned if their internet wasn’t working I might find a book on the subject.  Standing over six feet tall I struggled to get into my Chevy Bolt as I struggled to remember why I bought the darn thing.  Oh yeah, climate change, which made me laugh, because I struggle to understand how making a phrase out of an obvious scientific phenomena such as the climate changing helps anyone identify a problem.  As a matter of fact the climate does change, or it wouldn’t be the climate. I digress. 

Driving to the library I found myself looking to turn when a car that should have kept going suddenly stopped to wave me in, for which I struggled to see the logic since, not being able to see what’s coming, I might get t-boned by an unwitting commuter.  Having seen this happen before I waved them on, which led to another struggle of waving back and forth until they were waving at me with a lone middle finger.  Forced politeness is exhausting. 

Following my failed boulevard friend down the road I struggled to read the bumper stickers on the back of their Prius.  As I browsed their car art it was apparent to me they had an immense and unquenchable hatred for one Donald J. Trump. I struggled to understand why anyone would deface their thirty-thousand dollar vehicle with decals about someone they claim is a narcissist. Free advertising for a narcissist would seem to defeat the point.  Their Prius said as much about them as the stickers did about the bad orange man. Hating narcissistic politicians is one small way to help the environment.

Pulling into the library I struggled to find a parking spot since the new town ordinance mandated spacing that seemed more suitable to parking Segways.  On my way to the entry I struggled to avoid eye contact with the vagrants panhandling along the sidewalk.  It occurred to me: was this cosmic justice for them being born the wrong color? Take that, racists!

At the help desk inside I asked the lady where the computer bank was and she asked me to repeat myself since I spoke too quietly, so, like Goldilocks, I struggled to find just the right pitch so as not to be too loud and expose the nice people of my town to the fact I had become racist overnight. That could be upsetting for essentially all of them who, whether they liked it or not, were soon to find out they were also racist – because Vermont.

Looking around I marveled at how many racists were in my town and how NONE of us had any idea about the others.  How lucky it is that a young black man managed to sneak his way into a college professorship despite systemic racists all around him trying to keep him down with their government handouts and affirmative action, long enough for him to write this epic to save us all from chronic racism. Truly heroic. He must know an anti-racist leprechaun. 

 Having watched the History Channel I recalled professional racists used to wear noticeable outfits with long white pointy hats, like the Pope (also a racist), and struggled to figure out why we all weren’t making it easier for everyone by wearing them.  Or at least burning crosses, but then again, no self-respecting environmentally conscious racist would be so awful as to increase their carbon footprint just to virtue signal.  That’s why they wear masks. 

Once at the computer bank I struggled to find one not in use given most of my town is either voluntarily or involuntarily unemployed.  I struggled to understand how so many people were out of work with all of those help wanted signs up around town.  Even the shop where the help wanted signs are made had a help wanted sign posted outside. Times are hard even for racists. 

A kiosk finally became available so I sat down to login, but I struggled to remember my password because I have so many of them.  I also struggled to touch the keyboard because the person before me failed to wipe their cooties off, but there were no cleaning supplies.  What a time for the supply chain to slow down – in the middle of a pandemic!

I decided my immune system would have to do so I typed in “how to do a struggle session”.  Rather than find a helpful how to article I discovered struggle sessions were made popular in communist China.  Apparently the brainwashed youth known as the Red Guard, along with the other mindless Chinese commies, used these to shame successful Chinese people into believing they were bad for being successful. I struggled to understand how the Chinese adults didn’t slap the Kung Fu out of these entitled little brats.  I also struggled to figure out why China chose communism. Didn’t they know the inventor of communism was an openly racist white guy? 

The struggle is real. 

Johnny Bananas is the nom de plume of a fake news reporter living in Vermont. Nothing he reports ever actually happened. This is satire, folks.