The Lines

Or maybe more accurately titled The Lines That Divide Us.

I'm increasingly disillusioned with the racial segregation in the DC area. I moved one mile, just over the Maryland border and my neighborhood went from entirely black to entirely white. From working class to obviously affluent.

When I go out, the majority of clubs and bars are fairly segregated. Last night I was probably one of three white people in the bar I went to. I had a fantastic time, maybe partly because I was grateful for the (second) chance to go someplace I would have never had the guts to go in high school or college and because the people were really chill (and excellent dancers).

This is the South I remember from my childhood, and I'm constantly aware of how much I missed growing up, how much I never got to experience or see because there were places I simply did not go. Why not? I was taught not to, and I believed I was not welcome there. While that may or may not have been true as a kid, there seems to be very little hostility in DC even when I clearly stick out.

My initial impression is that there is more overt racism from white people. Really, racism is so linked to fear that it is hard to distinguish the two. I understand people fear what they are taught to fear, and that to some extent all humans fear what is different from their own experience, from their own comfort zone. But it strikes me as so incredibly sad. It's like no one ever grew out of the cliques in high school.

Two summers ago my step-dad gave me a fantastic book to read called Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story by Timothy B. Tyson. It is one of the best books I've read. It's about a racially motivated killing and the aftermath in the small North Carolina town of Oxford. For Tyson, this is the central event of his young life, and his outrage shapes his young adulthood and entire career trajectory. Reading this book as an adult, many years removed from my southern childhood was a re-awakening of sorts. All sorts of things crystallized, and I came away with a much better idea of why things were the way they were, and also how painfully slow change is (Tyson relates in his book that one of the first copies of the story to be given to the library in Oxford was destroyed shortly thereafter).

Meanwhile, I'm missing the old neighborhood. I liked being someplace where I didn't fit in (of course, I never fit in anywhere-- it's just a degree of how obvious the discord is), someplace that wasn't immediately entirely comfortable, someplace where I was forced to re-examine and lay to rest some of the more destructive assumptions from my childhood yet again.