Today I met one of the young blacks with whom the parents have had “the talk”. [View all]

[Mira]

I live in the South.
And my neighbors have guns. But I forget that. And often I realize I shouldn’t - or that I shouldn’t have!

Not til it was all over, and I ruminated about how strange I felt about the incident, did I put it together.
The talk had told the young black man to not come onto a white person’s property because they could have a gun and their life might be in danger.

My layout is a huge, mostly graveled business like back yard, fenced, with a 10 foot gate, and it was open because I worked on a project and expected a visitor.
I saw a young black man stand at the gate, and he obviously wanted my attention. So I waved him in. He would not come.
I was busy, I waved him in with grand gestures next - but he still would not enter through the property perimeter.
I walked towards him then, irritated really, because why did he make me do that when obviously he was the one who needed me, not the other way around.

It turned out he needed to call someone, and asked me for the use of my phone.
I actually had to go get the phone, take it to him at the gate and then go pick it back up from him later.

NO WAY
No earthly way
would a person with white skin have had to jump through the hoops of such considerations, they would have walked up after my gesturing without second thoughts.

I so wish America could face up to what it has done and is still doing to its black citizens.
I’m an immigrant who came in on a coal freighter from Europe in the sixties, and because my skin is pink I was never stigmatized.

I once asked my (Democratic) Mother-in-Law who thought it was so great that her son had married a German how she would feel about that if Germans were black.
“That would make a huge difference” she said.

What I witnessed today, and of course often do in many ways, shows you that difference.

I'm sad about how this very simple incident shows our white folk privilege is inherent and does not extend to our fellow citizens of color. Jim Crow is alive in so many ways.
I'm glad that Germans are rarely black makes my life a whole lot less complicated.