Theo Von is hilarious
“I got jumped by a bunch of black dudes in at a state fair at night man...you know what that’s like? Close your eyes and imagine it. You know how many black guys there are? As much as your imagination can gave.
But before you think I’m racist. If you’re black, imagine fighting white guys in a cloud, man. Scary, right?”
Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III...........................
When I was in the Navy, I got jumped by four black guys. Their rationale (which they voiced after one of them kicked me in the ass from behind, after which they surrounded me) was “We don’t like your hat” referring to my squadron hat, VA-46, whose name was “The Clansmen”. It referred the the Scottish heritage or influence on our squadron, and we had the McDougal tartan painted on our planes, along with the McDougal family crest.
Dumb asses didn’t know the difference between “Clansmen” and “Klansmen”. (To be fair, in the middle of the night someone painted out “VA-46 Clansmen” on the vertical stabilizer of one of our planes, and painted “VA-46 Klansmen” on it. The brass was not amused.)
In any case, I doubt they were induced or affected by my squadron hat. They were drunk, and hunting for “polar bears”, a name for solitary white guys, preferably wearing glasses.
I was lucky they were drunk, because after they surrounded me and moved in, I took one swing before they had me down and were kicking and punching me for all they were worth, but I think they were kicking each other more than me.
After a minute of so of this, I was able to break away, grabbed a swab from a bucket, and used it to fend them off with my back to the wall.
They finally gave up and left (this was at night) so I went over to the squadron hangar where my superior petty officer (AD1 Woods) was working night shift, and I told him what was had happened, and with no pause or hesitation, he said “You want to get some guys together and go look for them?”
AD1 Woods was a black sailor. I was glad for that, because I often wonder if that incident might have changed the way I view blacks over the long term had he not offered to stick up for me)
I declined his offer, but for many more months after that, I scanned the face of every black sailor who walked by, wondering he was one of the group that attacked me.
But I could honestly not remember any faces. Too much adrenaline, not enough light, and not enough presence to actually commit their faces to memory.