I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and would probably be best described as a former mall rat so I can't say that I grew up in the hood; pretty far from it. When I first moved to Tennessee, I lived in Jackson. There was a lot of culture shock for me. Everyone seemed nicer, but really they were less likely to tell you what they thought of you and tell everyone else instead. I also have learned what the phrase "the other side of the tracks" means. In Jackson, it literally seemed like on some invisible line the town is divided between whites and blacks and the only place one would meet someone of the other race was at Walmart.
In Chicago, I remember neighborhoods that had lots people from Poland here and Italians there and Hispanics there, but I don't not remember such clear dividing lines between who lived where. I guess I really wasn't that aware of differences because everyone was different, but a former white southerner living in Chicago told me "in the south whites don't get along with blacks and blacks don't get along with whites; in Chicago everybody hates everybody." I often get frustrated by southern racism, but growing up though I learned every derogatory phrase for everybody and used most of them. I can hold a contest with George Carlin for knowledge of the most ethnic insults. The difference though I think is that I don't know of anyone where I grew up who actually meant the insults as racial insults just as insults. Here people seem to mean them.
It seems to me that whites and blacks in south have developed two independent cultures side by side due to segregation. If someone meets someone from another country, we expect that there are differences and forgive each other's faux pas. I don't necessary think that the two cultures recognize that the two cultures exist and think "well they're Americans, they should act like me." I am also amazed that we are afraid to ask simple questions about each others cultures for fear of embarrassment. Instead of "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask," someone needs to write "Everything You Wanted to Know About (African Americans, Caucasians, Hispanics, Northerners, Southerners, or You Name It), but Were Afraid to Ask."
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We have a new employee here who moved away from the Katrina disaster. She assumed upon meeting all us white people that we are naturally racist, so she set about defining the black culture for us since we are so ignernt. SHe even described what is known as "BIF"- Black Intimidation Factor, the phenomenon that relays how white people are naturally afraid of black people. Some of us are starting to get irritated because every conversation somehow leads back to the distinguishing fact that we are shamefully white,and also that she went to a better college than some of us did. I guess if you grow up in the south, and are acquainted with southern racism for long, then you expect that it is everywhere else in the world, even California where white people are now the minority.
At first, we all tried to qualify ourselves to the new employee.
"My sister only dates black guys."
"My best friend is black."
"My cousin adopted a black baby."
And so on.
But then we realized that we didn't have any guilt to admit to, but somehow we all felt guilty for being born white. I understand white privelege, and I understand that some white people are racist. I am willing to engage in conversation on the subject, but not when I am implicated in the topic of conversation every time.
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