Oh, so that's where the racism was hiding.

[seiberwing]

Fair warning, guys, this is gonna be pretty self-focused and decadent. I'm not trying to make any major point or prop myself up as ~enlightened~, I just needed to get my thoughts out. Realizing you've lived in a town your entire life and yet never gotten the full picture of its reality is a little disorienting and I'm still trying to figure out how

Comments

[faithinfire]

Ugh. That's horrible - both that it's like that, and that it could be so completely hidden from view if you're on one side of the dividing line. I feel for your horror at this, I really do. *hugs tight*

[kittenmommy]

ITA.

[seiberwing]

It really reinforces the point that one's perception of the world is heavily influenced by one's social position.

[ravenology]

Unnerving it might be, but at least now you know what's really going on you can think about what to do about it. It's better than remaining blind to it.

[seiberwing]

Oh hells yes.

[valentinite]

There's a really fascinating (and fairly quick to read) book on segregation outside the deep south called Sundown Towns -- I knew I'd grown up in one, but what I hadn't realized was how common it was, which was an eye-opener. I thought I'd grown up in a backwater and most of the country was better; that was wishful thinking.

I don't know what to do about it, besides raising any hypothetical kid with more diversity than I grew up with. (My parents did recognize the issues with the town, and I ended up at a private school that was mostly rich kids but had lots of racial diversity. Which, in part, led to me not quite realizing how strongly being black is correlated with being poor and how terrible the economics of being minority still are in the US, since I grew up surrounded by black rich kids. But it was better than the lily-white lockstep at the local public school.)