I’ll never forget how one of our black friends acted when his car broke down in the middle of Oakland. He was terrified. He called from a pay phone, and a whole car load of us had to go down and rescue him. He was very GQ—would have stuck out in the ghetto like a sore thumb.
Reminds me of this tech team I supervised a while back having two black members. One was from the ghetto. The other was a black gal raised middle class from a midwest town. She said she was shaking with fear with she first started working here in SF and got exposed to ghetto blacks. One of her duties was handling equipment at the city jail and all the inmates would be saying all manner of things to her. Also had to go to service equipment at the food stamp outlets in the black neighborhoods. She said black people scared her like no other people. Awful strange hearing this from a black gal. The other black worker did not have a problem, was street smart and could defend himself. The black gal married, had kids and they now live in an upscale white area. The black worker still lives in the hood.