Diversity And The White House Staff - 'Gotta Have Me A Black Man', Said The President-Elect

Reggie Jones grew up in rural North Carolina across the swamp from Nags Head and the tony beach towns along the coast.  It was a straight shot to Pickens, especially if you had a 489, one of those big Chevys the crackers drove on the straightaway, which the road mostly was, nothing but burly pine trees and marshy bogs on either side; and the two worlds couldn't have been more different.  On the beaches lily white lobbyists and thoracic surgeons, but out past the swamps as black as can be, not much different from the Jim Crow days of the South, poor, uninspired, and doggedly living out a corn pone and fatback existence as hired hands at the mill.  

Reggie Jones had gumption and get up and go, and made his way across the swamp to look for summer work, maybe find him a gentleman who would take him north and make him somebody; but of course that was nothing but a pipe dream, a fairy tale read to him by his grandmother.  No one even knew he was there in the kitchen, a dishwasher and scullery boy.  'Gotta get me out front', he said to himself, 'meet me some people'. 

Thanks to his ambition and good manners, he convinced the restaurant manager to let him fill in for a white boy who had gone down with the flu - under supervision of course, and under the manager's watchful eye, but still the opportunity he had waited for.

He did not disappoint, and although he caught himself with a 'Yes, Massa, and No, Massa', legacies of his grandfather Olatunji a proud black man who had kept his Nigerian name but who learned that servility, as insulting as that was, was ingratiating.  Olatunji in his later, civil rights years became a preacher and could turn out a full house every Sunday.  His fiery sermons were the talk of the town, and not a few women were saved thanks to his intercession with the Lord.  The Lord was his shepherd, and the days of segregation and Jim Crow were left far behind. 

 

Olatunji was Reginald's inspiration and his hope; and it was he that sent the young man across the swamp to white folks' beaches.  'You may be haulin' slop, Reggie, but it may be some Congressman's'.

It was the waitering job that first put him in touch with The Congressman, a well-known Democrat who spent a few days every summer on the beach with his family before headed to his constituency. The Congressman was quite taken with young Reggie - now a very handsome, high-toned, almond-eyed beauty - and he always chose a table where Reggie would be serving, and before the end of the summer, they were more than staff-client, and growing friends.  

At least that was what the Congressman thought, so enamored was he; but Reggie knew a pederast when he saw one - his grandfather had been pawed over by white officers in Italy during the war and Reggie intended to stay clear of any untoward entanglements but the very idea of a Congressman and one with money and influence was too good to be true. 'Do whatever it takes', said Grandpappy, 'and don't look back'. This too from the old man's experience.  It wasn't just bending over to pick up the trash that got you places if you were a black man. 

One thing led to another, and before you knew it, Reggie was on an Amtrak Metroliner to the Nation's Capital, all expenses paid by the Congressman although he flew home in a private jet offered by one of his wealthy backers, an industrialist with pockets full of rare earths and industrial diamonds from Angola. It would be years before the Congressman was ever called out for these favors, and in the meantime they enabled him to live high off the hog; which is why he never thought twice about bringing this beautiful black concubine with him to Washington. 

Of course the sexual favors didn't last.  The Congressman quickly tired of just one paramour and turned his attention to what had become a pasha's harem of sloe-eyed Arab boys, lovely Tamils, and a Palestinian charmer.  Reggie was left on the curb, but now knew something about the ways and wiles of Washington and cajoled and wheedled the Congressman for a glowing recommendation, and was hired by a a succession of aides, lobbyists, managers, and media - all in rather menial positions for he had no professional skills to speak of - but again in tribute and respect for Olatunji, he bided his time and waited for the right opportunity. 

Reggie happened to be in Washington at the time of Donald Trump's surprisingly convincing victory in the election, and was caught up in the Washington whirlwind recruitment frenzy.  Everybody was angling for some kind of job in the new Administration, and Reggie - true to his romantic, fairy tale, self - was no different.  Why not him?  The White House was big enough to accommodate a simple soul like him even if it was in the kitchen; and through his now fine-tuned connections, he was interviewed for a job, not much more than a downstairs gofer, but nevertheless close to the Holy Grail. 

Now, the recruitment staff knew that the President, true to his talent-first recruitment policy, had not looked for racial diversity.  Besides he had already hired a number of Asians and one Trobriand Islander, so there was at least some color in the Cabinet.  'You need a black man', said the chief of his transition team. 'They don't have to be visible, but just in case the press goes looking, you'd better have one someplace'.  So true to form, among the Irish, Polish, Hungarian, and Slovakian applicants for jobs in the White House kitchen was Reginald Jones.  

Take him', the kitchen recruiter was told. 'Give him fuck-all to do, but take him'; and so it was that Reggie found himself in a European smorgasbord of chefs, sous-chefs, pastry chefs, plongeurs, and sauciers, all regularized and visaed - the best of the applicants and determined to make White House cuisine something to be remembered. 

Now, ever since the movie The Butler Americans have always assumed that a White House butler would be a black man - not just any black man but one in the old antebellum Southern tradition - dutiful, respectful, humble, impeccably mannered and quite professional - and that preconception was not far from the truth; so it was not long after the new President was elected the White House major domo saw an opportunity to both raise the visibility of the black man and to assure an orderly transition.  The current butler, and old black man like Reggie from rural North Carolina, was about to retire, and his replacement had to be trained and ready.  Reggie had acquitted himself well in the kitchen, was presentable and clean, and would do the trick.  

'See how diverse I am?', the President remarked to his staff with a smile. 'Put that in your pipe and smoke it', and of course that remark went viral and the Left once again howled 'racist!', but now in his second and last term in the White House, Donald Trump wasn't fazed in the least. 

Olatunji couldn't have been more pleased when he heard the news, and felt that his grandson was going places; but as far as Reggie was concerned, he was still shufflin', shuckin' and jivin'; so with The Congressman's suck money, and the little widow's mite he was able to save, he went back to Pickens, put a down payment on the saw mill, and within years was a corporate investor in Piggly Wiggly and Dollar General.  OK not Whole Foods and Saks, but still.