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I came home to Los Angeles last week after five months away. The house was in good shape, save for a few dead plants. My car was right where I’d left it. All of my mail was piled up neatly. There was just one problem: the restaurant next door, which had been an expensive small-plates place when I decamped in April, had closed. It is now a sports bar.
I was horrified. Not because I’d been a fan of the $15 tapas, which beloved local food critic Jonathan Gold had dubbed “haute cuisine with Etsy sensibility” – gag – but because the bro element had invaded my neighborhood.
Last year, NPR’s Code Switch identified four primary dimensions of bro-ness: physical prowess (jockishness), a tendency to hang out with other bros (dudeliness), access to money and a generally conservative outlook (preppiness) and a weakness for weed (stonerishness). Wikipedia puts it more simply: “Bro is a male youth subculture of ‘conventional guys’ guys’ who spend time partying in ways similar to each other.”
I know not all sports fans are white bros, and I know not all white bros are bad guys. Hey, some of my best friends are white hetero dudes who are really into fantasy football and own multiple pairs of cargo shorts! And yet nothing is scarier to me than a pack of drunk bros.
Maybe it’s because I’ve read too many stories about women being raped in frat basements and abused by athletes – who, especially if they’re white, tend to go unpunished or get away with a light slap on the wrist. (Well, as long as TMZ doesn’t leak a recording of the incident.) Maybe it’s because I’ve seen groups of men challenge each other to prove their masculinity in ways that are dangerous to themselves and others. Maybe it’s a vestigial fear of the guys who threw kickballs at my head in junior high-gym class (not that I’m saying I wasn’t an easy target, as a 6ft-2in nerd with buck teeth and all of the physical grace of a baby giraffe taking its first steps on the savanna). Maybe it’s because, as an adult, I’ve been harassed by drunk white men far more often than any other demographic.
Or perhaps it comes down to statistics: I’m white, and white people are most likely to be raped and murdered by other white people.
If I’m being honest, though, maybe I just don’t like the idea of saying “I live above a sports bar”, as if I’ve chosen to be in close proximity to the dudely, preppy jocks. (All of LA is a stoner’s paradise, so I’m leaving that characteristic off the list.) My house is my haven, and I’m unsettled by the idea of the patrons on the patio below, drunk on microbrew and privilege, sitting close enough to hear me uncork the pinot and settle in for a night of Netflix.
Everyone has gut-level feelings about who is and who is not a threat to them, based on a combination of personal experience and political beliefs and deep-seated racism and dozens of other factors. The killing of Mike Brown this summer in Ferguson, Missouri – and, before that, Jonathan Ferrell in North Carolina, Jordan Davis and Trayvon Martin in Florida, Renisha McBride in Michigan, Sean Bell in New York, the list goes on and on – are the tragic consequences of the persistent stereotype that black Americans are more dangerous and violent than white Americans. Even when the crime statistics say otherwise. Even when they’re standing still with their hands in the air.
I confess that I am more scared of a certain type of drunk white guy than I am of black people. Like all biases, this fear is mostly due to my personal experience and assumptions. But it also has something to do with the fact that white men are usually not stereotyped as dangerous. Even if they openly mock the less-fortunate or declare they’re proud to be assholes, they can assume they’ll have public opinion on their side and a certain amount of sympathy from the cops. No matter what the crime statistics say, racial bias works in their favor. They are used to having the upper hand, especially when it comes to women, and I’ve watched anger flare in white men’s eyes when I’ve rejected their advances. As Cord Jefferson has written, “Time and time again, throughout the centuries, white men have made it very clear that they perceive white women to be their most valuable pieces of property.” Is it fair that all of this leapt to mind when I heard the words “sports bar”? No. But it is what I thought. This is what it means to be biased.
And yet, because I recognize that it’s a bad idea to stereotype whole categories of people as dangerous – and, I’ll be honest, because I’d still like to get a neighborhood discount – I decided to set aside my fears and venture downstairs for a beer.
Yes, there were two large, flat-screen TVs showing sports. But it was the WNBA. There were lots of white guys, but mostly they were scrawny and tattooed. There was a group of women and a few older Latino men hanging out, too. In other words, not exactly the hotbed of entitled-jock masculinity that I feared. I told the bartender that I live next door – so close that I can connect to my home wi-fi from the bar.
“Dude,” he replied, “That’s awesome. Wanna do a shot?” We did. Tequila.
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