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2008-07-11 - 10:52 a.m.

While I�m complaining about things, I figured I�d recount the story of my PCA from earlier this year. She was incredibly offensive. First of all, she was far less reliable than Jennifer (the reason I was stranded in bed this winter was that she didn�t show up to give me a hand).

More than that, she was so bizarre about other people that I couldn�t tell if she was racist or just plain weird. Our very first interaction tipped me off that something was amiss with her. We were chatting and getting to know each other. I mentioned I�d grown up in New York and her eyes got all wide with fear.

�Oh,� she exclaimed. �There are a lot of black people in New York!�
Uhm. I thought of something James Baldwin had said. �Harlem may be black America�s heart,� he noted. �But the South Side of Chicago is its chocolate soul.�
�Well, there are a lot of black people in Chicago too.�

I let it slide, chalking it up to a recent immigrant thing. She was fresh off the boat from the Phillipines. She was the goddamn foreigner here. Maybe she hadn�t yet tweaked to American culture. But a few weeks later she said something so strange, I wasn�t sure if it was racist or just odd.

She described someone (I think it was the cashier at the 7-11 near us) as �Negro�. What to make of that. In any event, I just didn�t want to deal with it. I called the woman at the Illinois Department of Human Services who handles my case and told her I really wanted my PCA reassigned.

Which she did. My current PCA is a very nice Haitian woman, with whom I practice French. Nya and I got conned into not taking Spanish in high school and it�s good to be able to substantively use my language skills.

So no more racist-or-not PCA for me. As I often say, I need this crap like a hole in the head and I�ve already got one of those. Well, lesions anyway�

� 2008 Geoff Gladstone

If you�ve ever enjoyed my writing style or substance, if you�ve ever learned anything from reading this, please donate to the Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis and/or the Montel Williams MS Foundation. Just $5 is suggested, but give whatever you think it�s worth/can afford. �Charity� is really buying something meaningful to you (and it ain�t just for the wealthy�).

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