Heyyy that photo was taken a couple miles from where I am sitting. Terrifying.
When I moved here, we rented a house in an all-black neighborhood. They weren’t um, super warm. In my “post-racial white savior” mentality, I’m like, this is odd, I’m trying to desegregate this place! Eventually one neighbor took the time to kindly educate me. Many of those older folks had family, grandparents and uncles, who were lynched in pubic. Many of them remember that photo being taken, most knew the Little Rock Nine personally. Their neighborhood was about safety, about a place they could be without constant worry. They reflexively did not like seeing young white folks move in. Holy shit I suddenly got it. As a gay guy I could imagine that applying to my own minority status.
I live in a gayborhood now and sure enough, as the house next door goes on the market, we’re trying to make it clear conservative straight folks are not welcome.
Perspective is interesting. I keep my mouth shut and my ears open when it comes to race, cause I grew up in a literally all-white town.
I’d be careful about saying you “got” it. You got a glimpse of it.
I remember going into a segregated laundromat in 2005 in Alabama. It wasn’t legally segregation, but they absolutely had a black and a white laundromat, and I (white dude) went into the wrong one and felt very uncomfortable with all the looks I was given. I was eventually approached and told to leave and go to the white one, which happened to be much nicer, of course.
I thought at the time that I suddenly understood it. But black people deal with thay every fucking day, and I do not “get it” because of 10 minutes of racial discomfort in my 20s.
Heyyy that photo was taken a couple miles from where I am sitting. Terrifying.
When I moved here, we rented a house in an all-black neighborhood. They weren’t um, super warm. In my “post-racial white savior” mentality, I’m like, this is odd, I’m trying to desegregate this place! Eventually one neighbor took the time to kindly educate me. Many of those older folks had family, grandparents and uncles, who were lynched in pubic. Many of them remember that photo being taken, most knew the Little Rock Nine personally. Their neighborhood was about safety, about a place they could be without constant worry. They reflexively did not like seeing young white folks move in. Holy shit I suddenly got it. As a gay guy I could imagine that applying to my own minority status.
I live in a gayborhood now and sure enough, as the house next door goes on the market, we’re trying to make it clear conservative straight folks are not welcome.
Perspective is interesting. I keep my mouth shut and my ears open when it comes to race, cause I grew up in a literally all-white town.
I’d be careful about saying you “got” it. You got a glimpse of it.
I remember going into a segregated laundromat in 2005 in Alabama. It wasn’t legally segregation, but they absolutely had a black and a white laundromat, and I (white dude) went into the wrong one and felt very uncomfortable with all the looks I was given. I was eventually approached and told to leave and go to the white one, which happened to be much nicer, of course.
I thought at the time that I suddenly understood it. But black people deal with thay every fucking day, and I do not “get it” because of 10 minutes of racial discomfort in my 20s.