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I spent some time at a client’s office for a rush job, and had to catch a taxi partway back to the city. I got into the cab and the driver said, “Where’re we going today?”

“Uh, Millibrae Station.”

“Where are you from?” he asked in the same accent all the Africans in the movies have. I told him Georgia, but that I live in San Francisco. He laughed and said, “I thought you might be African, brother! We’re all black, especially when it comes to the police. He’ll look at you and knock you down and call you nigger whether you’re from Africa or America!” He had a habit of laughing while he talked, making words a little longer, but a lot more interesting, than they would normally be.

I laughed and agreed, so we built on what I guess is that neo-Pan-African tip for a while. We talked about Oscar Grant and traded police brutality stories. In 1974, when he was still new to the States, he was working at a restaurant. He left his gig at 3 in the afternoon, and before he could get to his car, two cops had run up and thrown him onto the hood of a car. They thought he was someone who had been running around stealing purses from ladies. He insisted he wasn’t, that he’d been at work when the crime happened, but it took his manager noticing the scuffle and coming outside with his schedule to convince the two cops that he’d done nothing wrong. He called them bastards at one point, enunciated thicker than everything else.

He said he’d given his son some advice about the police once he got old enough. I said “Be respectful” at the same time he said “Be nice to the police.” We laughed. We talked about how black kids, black boys at least, aren’t taught that the police are protectors. We’re taught to fear them. The police are invaders, monsters with canine-filled jaws and a thirst for black blood. We’re taught to be as polite as possible, to make no sudden moves, to smile, to not smile too big, and to be submissive. When I got my learner’s permit, I got a very serious talk about how if I ever got pulled over, I needed to drive to either a location with a lot of people, no matter how embarrassing it was, or to a brightly lit lot. He’d told his son the same thing. He said heard Jessie Jackson say that years ago.

We talked about politics, and how Republicans are disrespecting Obama out of proportion to the usual political attacks. We talked about how politicians lie, and how welfare queens got Ronald Reagan elected. We talked about how people do and believe stupid things when they’re broke and depressed. “They’ll vote for the Devil,” he said, “if the Devil promises salvation.” He said that twice over the course of the conversation, but it’s true. It needed the emphasis.

Herman Cain came up. We agreed that he was a dog with Republican masters, a tool they could use to say the most outlandish garbage about Obama and get away with it. “We’re not racist! He’s black!” Cain didn’t last long, though, and it was his weakness for women that brought him down. The cabbie mentioned that power is an aroma, an aphrodisiac, but those Cain was a fool about it. I laughed and said “Monica Lewinsky.” He laughed, too.

Toward the end of the ride, he looked back at me and said, “I’ll tell you, among all the men, the black man is blessed.” I asked him how so. “The black man has a bouquet of women.”

I rolled that over in my head for a moment. We have… a lot of options? We can get any woman? Was this a philanderer thing? I asked him, “What do you mean?”

“The black man has a bouquet of women because we have all of the colors. You can see a black woman that’s so light she looks white, and you won’t see the Negroid features until you look real close. There’s dark, dark women from Africa. They’re all black.” I laughed, and realized I agreed. We got to Millibrae and I paid and caught a train back to the office.

Later, thinking about it, part of me wanted to stamp on that thought, the bouquet of women, and kill it. I wanted to kill it like I did the idea that black people were kings and queens in Africa, but slaves in America. I wanted to wipe it out, to point out that all races have a spectrum of tones. I wanted to correct it. But then a bigger part of me realized that I really did agree with him, and that the bouquet was a beautiful thing. It’s a knowledge bomb, in a way, or a jewel.

I thought about all the different girls whose skin tones took my breath away. Method Man saying “I got a love jones for your body and your skin tone.” Kanye West talking about going to the club with “some light-skinned girls and some Kelly Rowlands.” Black girls being lightened in magazines because white is closer to right. Foxy Brown. Trina. This actress I recently discovered, Adepero Oduye. “Coke on her black skin made it stripe like a zebra.” Aaliyah. Sadé. I thought about “Brown Skin Lady” and “Yo Yeah,” both of which are from that first Black Star album:

“Black is.
Black is something to laugh about.
Black is something to cry about.
Black is serious.
Black is a feeling.
Black is us.
The beautiful people.”

I thought about all the beautiful brown-skinned women I’ve known and seen and decided that, in a very real way, I agree that the black man is blessed with a bouquet of women. The kings & queens thing is a fiction, but a useful one. It gives men, women, and children a sense of intrinsic value in a land where they’re probably starting so far behind the eight ball that they can’t even see it. A bouquet of women, each of them a unique flower, is less untrue than that. It’s a concept that works for me. I’m glad he said it.

(Part of me hates that I can’t accept this in and of itself, but a different part of me appreciates all the thought it has sparked.)