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  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Newsweek -- "A one point race" ?
  • Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:20:32 -0400

I'm glad somebody understood what I was saying. I was worried about that. My little town probably has about the same number of black people as a larger town up north or out west...maybe 6-10%...not sure. I think there might be one or two hairdressers in town that 'fix' black hair. I see ads in the paper "I do corn rows" or "I do extensions". It is not that a white beautician can't fix black folks hair, it is that blacks, understandably, want someone experienced in that. I certainly would rather go to someone who cuts white people's hair all day and I am sure the feeling is mutual. On the surface, that sounds racist, but it is not. It is a matter of experience with something. In areas, like Atlanta, were there is a huge majority, blacks can find someone to fix their hair anywhere. They aren't limited to one or two options. So that preference crosses over into various aspects of life.
I think what you feel, Susan, is what we all want, 'the comfort of home'.
Just today, my best friend and I were talking about the Pac NW, which I love and consider my second home. I feel like I fit in there, physically anyway....lots of Viking blood in that part of the country. Anyway, my friend asked me why I never moved there. It's real simple. I was born and raised as a Southerner. I would never truly fit in...my accent would give me away...lol...besides, they don't have Waffle House or grits. :) The coffee is good, though!


SJC wrote:
EarthNSky wrote:
In a way, it is voluntary segregation, blacks returning to city where they are the majority and rejecting integrated cities. Culturally, it makes perfect sense. They have roots here, family here, and even the food has soul. ;)
Makes perfect sense to me. I grew up in a very distinct lifestyle from that of the rest of the country. I left at 15 in order to go to high school and live "like everybody else". To this day, despite the fact I left voluntarily, I am never more comfortable and relaxed than where the people speak "right", whether in English or my native language, where the food is somehow more familiar than that I've been eating for the last 50 years, where the social customs seem to be so "right" (and both human/humane compared to what I see on a daily basis now), where the clothing and hairstyles/cuts are so familiar it has drawn tears sometimes when I've gone to visit and momentarily had to remind myself that it was just a visit......I've often thought that on many levels I'd like to be living with or near "my people" again. It is, in fact, one of the reasons I've decided to relocate in the next few years: to be closer to an often much-maligned (by neighbors, media, just about anybody at one time or another) group of people. We all like something that makes us comfortable.

Reminds me of what happened right after forced school segregations in the north. Many people hated it, not just whites, but of both races. No one changed their social allegiances, nor for that matter, activities.

If you have a dozen red chickens and bring in a white one, she's a goner. Same thing if the colors are reversed. Have a dozen white, or black, or whatever color, chickens and bring in one that looks just like them, she'll eventually be one of them, albeit at the bottom of the pecking order. Sometimes I wonder just how different we humans are. I'm definitely one of the most tolerant (of personal differences of all kinds) people in my neighborhood, but I'm also the one who is "out of the water" here. Once in a while (admittedly it's usually when I feel provoked by someone/something that went on) I catch myself wondering if I came by that tolerance by way of wanting not to be shut out....I didn't do such deliberately, but it may be that I've done in nevertheless.
I did, however, very deliberately teach my kids tolerance for people and their differences, and I'd say 2 of them are very tolerant, the other about at the level of his mother. One of my kids has ever since he left home lived, by choice, where there were few Caucasians and no native English-speakers. He is now contemplating moving back to where more folks are multilingual, and recently he noted that one of the stresses of the past 20 years has been that wherever he's lived he's occasionally wished for "somebody who thinks like I do" and when queried about that comment a few months ago, it turns out to be that what he's missing is the verbal expression of a value system, certain child-rearing practices he doesn't see where he is/has been, other things that basically to him say "home", "my people"......

So it seems a natural thing to me to want to be with one's "own kind of people".

Susan Jane, in Maine, where she just spent 2 days with visitors, old friends, from New York City, which is always fun and exhausting. If I had to move at that pace I'd have been dead long ago!
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