Summary: Hardison pulls the race card because he's Jewish, and Chinese, and Mexican, and you know what? People are totally being sexist, too. Written for comment-fic at LJ. Prompt: musing about white privilege or the lack thereof.
Disclaimer: Hardison making race jokes is canon. Okay? He does this. This is not me being racist. He has also pretended to be gay and transgender. It's hilarious, but I noticed that no one ever really talks about these jokes and it has me wondering if it's because it's one of those touchy subjects where everyone has blinders on, or if I'm just really sensitive about this topic. (That said, if anyone has a problem with this story, let me know and, provided you give a good enough reason, I'll delete it.)
Race
"This is racist," Hardison says, getting all up in the guard's face, "This is cuz I'm Jewish, innit? Jus' cuz I believe in the Star of mah bruddah David, you alls discriminatory-in' against me, ain'tcha?"
He hears Sophie's voice over the coms, gracefully extricating herself from the mark's clutches, and the amused snort Parker lets out as she slinks away from the distracted guards. He can almost hear Nate's mind clicking away on the next step after the next, and Eliot's eye-roll as he runs over towards him at full-speed.
It's not the first time he's used the race card with a dash of his own brand of humor to distract people during a con so his team can get away (it's not the first time he's done it to get himself out of trouble, either). No one else seems to find it funny, though. (Except for Parker. But Parker also thinks that melons tell hilarious knock-knock jokes.)
It's funny because in this day and age, a black man going on and on about discrimination because he's something other than the obvious black is puzzling enough to give him a few minutes of stall-time. Sure, he's pushed around a bit, but nothing major - he's pretty sure they see him as harmless and all mouth (which he is not, thank you very much).
"Dammit, Hardison," Eliot growls as he turns the corner and knocks the guards out, "Someone's gonna take offense to that someday and shoot your ass just to shut you up."
"You just sayin' that cuz I'm- "
"Don't finish that," Eliot interrupts, stalking away.
"You just jealous cuz I'm a Chinaman," Hardison says with a wide grin.
"Arrrgh!" The sight of Eliot throwing his hands up in aggravation adds another notch to Hardison's "annoy Eliot" quota of the day.
Parker's already in the van, munching on some of Hardison's snacks.
"Hey, are those my pork rinds?"