How do you handle someone who’s musty?
“Musty” is an African-American smell that ranks somewhere between “tart” and “stank” on the Black American Odor Scale.
And no, “musty” is not the same as “musk.” Musk is a scent that ancient Egyptian incense scholars developed in 1303 B.C., while musty predates humans. You can’t tell me that woolly mammoths weren’t musty. For some reason, elephants, pandas and hippopotamuses (or is it hippopotamai? Hippopotamen? ) don’t look musty, but kangaroos look like they got a little wang to them. And, I don’t wanna sound anti-white, but you can’t tell me that polar bears don’t smell like collard green pot liquor.
Here’s my point:
White people are musty.
Look, my Caucasian friends, there’s nothing wrong with being musty. It doesn’t mean you didn’t wash or that you don’t care about your hygiene. I’m pretty sure our enslaved ancestors weren’t musty-free after picking cotton from sunup to sundown. Anyone who’s succumbed to Pentecostal shouting music knows that the “anointing” leaves you a little musty (as it says in Two Corinthians, the Holy Ghost is more powerful than the devil’s deodorant). And you can’t tell me that Martin Luther King Jr. smelled like daffodils and cocoa butter after protesting all day in a JCPenney civil rights suit, and hard bottoms.
If your Stacy Adams didn’t smell a little musty after the march, did you have a dream?
Now, imagine if you and two friends are locked in a room with seven other people. Suddenly, you catch a whiff of something that smells like the inside of a vacuum cleaner that has just sucked up a family-sized bag of Doritos dust. You know your friends have showered and used deodorant.
You aren’t sure whether everyone is musty or just one person smells like post-shouting church socks, but you and your friends are the only ones who seem to notice. Maybe everyone else in the room is accustomed to the smell (if they were not raised around washcloths, for instance). Perhaps they are aware of the room’s distinct under-the-bed odor and are pretending that everything is fine. It’s also possible that they’re all protecting their smelliest friends. Or maybe they’re physically incapable of smelling mustiness.
You, the unmusty, have three options.
Adjust: Pretend your nose isn’t offended and act like everyone in the room.
Leave: Go back to where you came from.
Say something: In which case, you risk upsetting the vibes in the room.
No, this is not a metaphor for racism, privilege or whiteness. None of us are immune to the funk that life bestows upon us. I understand that this is part of the human condition. I believe there is only one relevant question that matters:
Am I musty?
Today’s Reading List
A Firsthand Account of the Legal Hearing, Support Rally, Church Service—and Attack—of Umar Johnson by Michael Harriot
Pete Buttigieg is a Lying MF by Michael Harriot
Pete Buttigieg Responds to Uproar Over Past Comments By Reid J. Epstein and Sydney Ember
Mayor Pete’s Invisible Black Police by Michael Harriot
The Kamala Conundrum by Michael Harriot
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