Will anyone call this racism?
My boyfriend is black (i'm white) and he's from Mississippi. He was raised in a great, middle-class family. His mom is an English teacher and his dad was the superintendent of food service at the school district in his little town. He had a good life, a full scholarship for track to MS Valley State, but he is very self-conscious still about being black.
Blacks from the S.F. Bay Area are quite different because they are used to being accepted. But my boyfriend told me, "If I took you back to Mississippi, there are people who would hang me if they could. There are still places Blacks can't/won't go - because of the intense pressure."
It's getting better everywhere, but there is something about the deep South that I don't think many of us can understand, unless we were from there.
I cannot imagine a person who would not think about such things. That would be a person who might be considered a fool and niave. Is it racism? Maybe it is, but I do not think so.
Racism and insistence not only on the opportunity but guaranteed outcomes too ... will it never end?