Seattle's mostly white. It's all over the news. Seattle is the fifth whitest city in the nation. Portland is first. That's what the 2010 census shows.
Before bin Laden's death, Seattle's whiteness was the talk about town. Lots of responses to the census figures were defensive. After all, Seattle's progressive and liberal, and we like to think of ourselves above the muck of racism. Besides, we also have the most racially diverse zip code.
I'm not surprised about the finding. When I first moved to Seattle in 1991, I lived near the university and, though I'm white, I felt uncomfortable about all the white people. I'm from the South, and I'm used to seeing more color. I went down to the south part of the city to Helen's Soul Food kitchen to eat beans and rice one day, and to find black people. I live near near Helen's Soul Food Kitchen now, and I have for some time, but now a lot of the black people in my neighborhood are moving further south in the city again.
When I completed my teaching certification program for Washington State, an African-American woman in my program from Alabama told me how uncomfortable she felt in Seattle, seeing white people in her grocery store and all. She preferred the South: "At least you know where you stand there. Here I don't know if people are really nice or not real," she said.
I was born in 1964 in a segregated hospital in Atlanta, and I went to an all-white elementary school for first grade before busing integrated my schools. When I was in second grade and my school was integrated, Michelle, an African-American second-grader with thick, tight braids, came to my birthday party. Apparently, this was a surprise. The generation before me just didn't have people of another race into their homes. Times can change quickly, however, and I was surprised by the surprise.
One of my first surprises in moving to Seattle was how white the north part of the city was. Another surprise was that I heard people talk regularly about the prejudice in the South, as if prejudice were absent in the Pacific Northwest, and all prejudice had pooled in the land of my birth.
When I was first teaching in a town just east of Seattle, I walked into another teacher's classroom, a history class, looking for a student whom I needed to talk with one afternoon in 1994. The teacher, a white man who was blind, didn't see me walk in. He was teaching students about the southern part of the United States. He talked about how it was a place of prejudice and bigotry like that was the only thing that was there. I almost got offended, but when I noticed that none of the students were paying attention, I decided not to worry about it.
I love Seattle. It's my adoptive home. I love its mountains and lakes; I love its fleece-wearning folk; I love its farmer's markets and its progressive politics. I belong here.
I still bristle, though, when I hear about the American South as if it's the pigsty of bigotry. There is bigotry in the South for sure. To me, the South's identity is inexorably tangled with the history of Civil War, with the identify of itself as a defeated nation seeking to maintain its heritage and its traditions in a new world where some of its traditions are clearly bigoted and, now, illegal--unconstituional even.
My birthplace not just a pigsty of bigotry; it is also a place of rolling mountains and long sandy beaches, fried chicken and shredded pork sandwiches, big family meals and churches on every corner. It's a place of syruppy accents and has a concentration of universities and research. At one point, a friend in Ireland told me that Research Triangle Park has the highest per capita of PhDs of any place in the world. Maybe it still does.
The South is bigger than its bigotry, just like Seattle is bigger than its whiteness. The census can't tell you that. For that, you have to go there. So if you're a world traveller and you haven't been to the American South yet, it's time you go discover its complex culture.
I can hook you up with a cousin for sure. Just be sure to mind your manners: say please and thank you and Ma'am and Sir.
A Photograph of me without me in it
A photograph of me without me in it
Showing posts with label home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Baby it's cold inside...
Our furnace went out last week, and it was cold in here. Just before the furnace died, we had it cleaned, so it's probably gone to furance heaven and is sitting at the right hand of God, since cleanliness is next to godliness. We spent a cold five days, but now we have a new furnace.
Last month we had electrical work done, sealing off the gas pipes that were used for lighting earlier in the last century. Then we had insulation put in, apparently not something that was done in 1895 and hadn't been done since. This summer, it's time (past time) to have the house painted. We're thinking yellow with white trim.
Ch-Ching.
We've also made other changes to the house. We made the dowstairs bathroom disability-friendly and had a bathroom put in upstairs (that makes it middle-of-the-night friendly, as there was no bathroom on the floor where the bedrooms are). We put an electric door opener on our second garage just before reducing from two cars to one. We removed the upstairs carpet and had the floors refinished. We rebuilt the front steps and replaced the wraught iron grating on the top and bottom porches with period-appropriate columns (especially appropriate if we were living in ancient Greece.)
We put gas logs in the fireplace, which before was covered with a large sheet of plastic and the chimney opened on top to the crows, who made regular chicken-bone offerings. We had french drains dug around the garage, so that the water would not come in. We had the backyard bulldozed and replanted, with a nice level path so that I can walk without falling and we can still grow tomotoes in the summer. We had the deck rebuilt.
Actually, we paid others to do most of these things, but we've done some things ourselves. We replaced the ugly boards and boxes that framed the windows with trim. We did a pretty good job of it. The new trim is gingerly nailed into lathe and plaster, so it looks good but don't swing on the trim unless you want to pull the whole wall down. We also painted the inside of the house. (You should see what a fine job I did on the texturing. The plaster swoops look a lot like frosting on a cake.) Previously, the kitchen was brown, then smoot-covered after I set a plastic tray on the pilot light. Now the kitchen's a lively pink, blue, yellow and grey: no threat of falling asleep while you cook (I say "you" because I do nothing around open flames since I've lost depth perception.) One of our first home projects was to dig a french drain in the front yard. Ann brought home a bunch of pcp pipe one afternoon and started digging. A french drain seemed to her an afternoon's work. We dug that french drain all summer and finally finished that french drain several months later.
As we finished the insullation (or as Wayne and his guys finished it while we ate bon-bons), Ann told our friend Pea that she couldn't think of another thing we needed to do to upgrade the house. I counted aloud, "One. Two. Three," marking the seconds until she thought of another thing. She obliged, "Oh. Except for build a little garage in front for our recycling bins. And re-doing the terracing in the front while we're at it. After that, I can't think of anything."
Give her time.
Mary
Last month we had electrical work done, sealing off the gas pipes that were used for lighting earlier in the last century. Then we had insulation put in, apparently not something that was done in 1895 and hadn't been done since. This summer, it's time (past time) to have the house painted. We're thinking yellow with white trim.
Ch-Ching.
We've also made other changes to the house. We made the dowstairs bathroom disability-friendly and had a bathroom put in upstairs (that makes it middle-of-the-night friendly, as there was no bathroom on the floor where the bedrooms are). We put an electric door opener on our second garage just before reducing from two cars to one. We removed the upstairs carpet and had the floors refinished. We rebuilt the front steps and replaced the wraught iron grating on the top and bottom porches with period-appropriate columns (especially appropriate if we were living in ancient Greece.)
We put gas logs in the fireplace, which before was covered with a large sheet of plastic and the chimney opened on top to the crows, who made regular chicken-bone offerings. We had french drains dug around the garage, so that the water would not come in. We had the backyard bulldozed and replanted, with a nice level path so that I can walk without falling and we can still grow tomotoes in the summer. We had the deck rebuilt.
Actually, we paid others to do most of these things, but we've done some things ourselves. We replaced the ugly boards and boxes that framed the windows with trim. We did a pretty good job of it. The new trim is gingerly nailed into lathe and plaster, so it looks good but don't swing on the trim unless you want to pull the whole wall down. We also painted the inside of the house. (You should see what a fine job I did on the texturing. The plaster swoops look a lot like frosting on a cake.) Previously, the kitchen was brown, then smoot-covered after I set a plastic tray on the pilot light. Now the kitchen's a lively pink, blue, yellow and grey: no threat of falling asleep while you cook (I say "you" because I do nothing around open flames since I've lost depth perception.) One of our first home projects was to dig a french drain in the front yard. Ann brought home a bunch of pcp pipe one afternoon and started digging. A french drain seemed to her an afternoon's work. We dug that french drain all summer and finally finished that french drain several months later.
As we finished the insullation (or as Wayne and his guys finished it while we ate bon-bons), Ann told our friend Pea that she couldn't think of another thing we needed to do to upgrade the house. I counted aloud, "One. Two. Three," marking the seconds until she thought of another thing. She obliged, "Oh. Except for build a little garage in front for our recycling bins. And re-doing the terracing in the front while we're at it. After that, I can't think of anything."
Give her time.
Mary
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