The girls at my work like to read personal ads and send them around to their co-workers when they are particularly amusing. Every once in a while, I find myself doing the same. The other day, I found an ad that appealed to me. It was a guy deriding all of the other men who were posting ads--he mocked their technique, vocabulary, etc. and then claimed to enjoy reading. I replied with an email that simply said, "Your ad would have been much, much better if you had added 'no fatties' to the end."
He wrote me back, and claimed, among other things, to be a doctor, and from England. The perfect pedigree for me, right? So I replied, and expressed an interest in seeing him doing a singing, dancing chimney sweep impression. It could only be improved upon, I added, if he did it in blackface. Typical Lina banter.
Our repartee continued for a few emails, when we decided to exchange pictures. He sent me his, and I immediately realized the gaff I had made.
He was black.
His email said, "This is a picture of me and my friend. I'm the one in blackface."
Oops.
But unable to stop myself, I wrote back that something seemed off about his blackface routine. Something just wasn't right.
"Oh," he wrote back. "I couldn't find any white lipstick that day."
