FIRST Experiences as a Person of Color

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I've LIVED in the south and most of the folks I met down there were not only more accepting but far kinder than anyone I've met in the Northeast. So, do me a favor and stop it with the stereotyping of anyone outside a city as some sort of redneck yokel.

+1
As someone who was born in Selma AL, and raised in the suburbs of New Orleans, I see more racism when I travel to the northeast than I ever do at home. In old southern cities especially, you will find thoroughly mixed neighborhoods, people of African and Italian and Irish and Jewish and Vietnamese and Middle Eastern descent all living on the same block, and mansions a block down from shotgun doubles. The suburbs and small towns are more sorted, though by income rather than race. In most cities from DC northward, there seems to be a line in town (often a set of railroad tracks) which marks the territory between races, and other lines that mark territory between national origins. When I go into a restaurant or store and for some reason decide to look around for it, I rarely find in the south that there are only white people, or that I'm the only one. It seems to happen far more regularly in the Northeast. I haven't spent enough time on the west coast to comment.