TollandRCR wrote:
The article made me uncomfortable as well, but for a few different reasons. May I ramble?
The writer seems to struggle with his own issues...the first that comes to me after reading the entire article is that he does not report speaking with any of the non-white residents. He also relays "stories" from white residents, laying out poignant "I tried to be nice to "these people" but you just can't help them...and the sweet story about how the benevolent white folks allow the little black children to come and trick-or-treat in their neighborhood, but most didn't even bother to dress up! The NERVE!
I think what bothers me the most is how the writer seems to assume that blacks have been offered everything under the sun with civil rights and all at stuff, and they just take advantage of it...that the situations they are in, and how they live, are the result of laziness...sitting around smoking pot, living off government assistance, 'cause you know white people don't do that. And dammit, here we are trying to move into their neighborhoods, bring them up out of squaller and see how they treat us?
I do understand the awkwardness sometimes between diffent races. But the dialog does not begin with false benevolence. That is a high-minded, missionary mistake. But I won't get on that soap box now.
Towards the end of the article, he says this, " Claire, the widow I talked to in Fairmount who was walking her terri-poos, doesn’t worry about saying the wrong thing in her neighborhood, about offending her black neighbors, because she’s confident of her own feelings when it comes to matters of race. But like many people, I yearn for much more: that I could feel the freedom to speak to my African-American neighbors about, say, not only my concerns for my son’s safety living around Temple, but how the inner city needs to get its act together. "
This was an article by a guy who is uncomfortable with race issues, so writes an article about white people being uncomfortable with race by using examples of white people being victims of ... what?