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[pmcd9]

Hey, I've been gone for a day and you've already wrapped this thing up. 

Sounds like Bat Shit was beligerant and uncooperative in the circle and your bosses let it slide.  I am worried that your bosses don't really have your back, but am impressed at your strength.

This poor lady doesn't stand a chance against you.

[jay-ell]

I caught myself watching the clock and wondering how you were getting on.

This, also. Congratulations, Smells. It sounds like a qualified success -- hopefully things will improve from here on out. I am worried that she'll find some other, subtler way to be evil to you. But maybe I'm just jaded. Either way, you handled the situation fantastically, and I hope you will be repaid by fate/God/karma/whatever in kind.

[side_show]

Thanks guys, I have a lot to process about how things went down.  I agree that management doesn't have my back.

I'm guessing she's always the hero victim of her inner narrative.

My fix here. 

If you're always the victim, then you never really have power, and that's not freedom.  That's what six months of therapy and one of the most brutal weeks of my working life has taught me thus far.

[Nabubrush]

You. Are. Rad.

[theinevitable]

I do not know how to handle this conversation my friend is trying to have with me on facebook. Prompted by the Trayvon Martin debacle, he is talking about how white people look at black people as criminals-- he is particularly mentioning crossing the street to avoid him, etc.

and like, I do not cross the street when I see a black person. But nearly every time I walk down a major road in STL I am asked for money by a black person. Every person I know who has been mugged (and sometimes beaten up or threatened with a gun) was mugged by a black person. Almost everyone I know has been mugged. My girlfriend's good friend only escaped being violently raped (...by a black person who grabbed her as she entered her apartment building) because her roommate got home and scared the guy off. There is a lot of media attention being paid to the "knockout game" in St Louis, where gangs of teenagers surround an innocent pedestrian and beat them up. In our neighborhood there are complaints about gang activity, shots are frequently heard at night... gangs of black teenagers. My female friends also talk about the catcall culture in St Louis (I'm sure there is a real word for this) where every time they walk for any distance they have random dudes propositioning them, yelling sexual things at them, etc.

So, as much as you want to talk about socioeconomic factors, the media blowing things out of proportion, etc... I don't blame people for being scared. It is only because I think a lot and was raised to question these things that I don't cross the street when it's late at night and I see a group of black teenagers approaching me. And maybe I'd be safer if I did. That makes me feel really horrible.

[Nabubrush]

You are going about that the wrong way. I'm not going to get into it (though you all know I would be able to ramble on so long it'd shut this board down). Suffice it to say your best play is to not get involved in the conversation. Fight the power, inev.

[Nabubrush]

Late at night with teenagers approaching, if they are from the same strata, you are probably as well served crossing the street or not no matter what color they are.

[wombat]

I do my best not to be racist, but I make no effort not to be ageist-sexist - I will cross the street to get away from a group of male teenagers of any apparent race or social class. Sorry, boys.

[jay-ell]

I don't cross the street to get away from people no matter who they are. But then, I give dollars to panhandlers when I have cash, so. Take that for what it's worth.

It really is a class issue. Based on my understanding of STL, there is a large population of poor black people concentrated mainly in one area -- it's like the Harlem of the midwest. In my area, we don't have a lot of gang activity* (to my knowledge) and you are more likely to be shot up by a drunk white redneck than a black inner city youth. Not to say there isn't a criminal element among the black community here -- it's just that they haven't quite cornered the market as much as it seems in some of your larger or more de facto segregated cities.

In Toledo, almost every crime you see in the paper is committed by a nonwhite person -- either black or hispanic. But that's because there's more income disparity between the races there. In Raleigh, we have sizable populations of both middle- and upper-class black families and poor, uneducated whites, so there is less of a correlation between race and crime than you might see in other parts of the country.

*When I was in high school, the worst gang I knew of was the Chinese Lynch Mob, which was a group of first- and second-generation Chinese-American teenagers who ran a black-market business selling drugs and stolen car radios.

[Nabubrush]

Truth.

Yeah. Thanks. I didn't want to go down the path.

I find that most people who think it would be so easy to get out of the ghetto and for poor folks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps don't have a lot of experience with it.

What'd I just see quoted? "You got where you are through hard work? Whose?"

[jay-ell]

What I didn't say was that I do understand why some people feel that they are less safe when surrounded by black teen boys than white adult women in certain cities. That doesn't make it OK to cross the street to avoid any black male you see, but it doesn't necessarily make the street-crosser a terrible person.

Is it a little bit racist? Probably. Is it OK to be a little bit racist? No. But being a little bit racist doesn't mean you're evil. It just means you're a little bit ignorant. And the best thing for that is...

...say it with me now...

...education.

Which is probably what your friend is aiming for, Inev. He can't educate the people who are crossing the street to avoid him, but he can educate you about how it feels to be avoided. And you saying, "Yeah, dude. I get it, to the extent that a southern-born white man can get it, and I wish it weren't that way" is probably the response that is going to make him feel the most better. But, being a white lady, I can only speculate as to his motives.

I will say this: my grandmother and step-grandfather were killed by a black ex-con meth addict. That doesn't make me hate black people. It makes me hate the prison system that failed to rehabilitate him, and meth dealers.

[Nabubrush]

What I didn't say was that I do understand why some people feel that they are less safe when surrounded by black teen boys than white adult women in certain cities.

There's a reason why black teen boys are generally more dangerous than white adult women, and it doesn't have anything to do with gender or race. So yeah, I think I am with you.

[jay-ell]

There's a reason why black teen boys are generally more dangerous than white adult women, and it doesn't have anything to do with gender or race. So yeah, I think I am with you.

But, there are some places and times in which I would take the black teen boys over the white adult women. For instance, the shoe department at Macy's on Black Friday.

[theinevitable]

You guys reacted to this line of discussion a lot better than my roommates. And yeah, I think not even entering the discussion might be best. It is hard because on some level that means I can never hang out with this guy, who turns everything into a discussion about race. I know, in my heart of hearts, that I am not a racist and that there is no reason he should get mad at me about anything I think. But I also know that I have a gold medal in putting my foot in my mouth, and frequently say things in really poorly chosen ways.

I think I can sum up my feelings as: I interact with lots of black people on both a personal and professional level who are nice, normal citizens who I enjoy talking to. I have also spent several years of my life learning about the way our surroundings can shape us and influence our behavior. When I see people doing bad things, I try to ascribe the cause of those things to their surroundings rather than to some group I imagine that they belong to.
For a lot of people in this city, who live in a segregated area and did not interact with black people growing up, their exposure to black people is:
1. seeing them committing crimes on TV
2. hearing stories about friends/family who have had criminal acts committed on them
so while it is wrong, that is how they end up holding racist beliefs about you. Sorry that it is that way, dude, you are a nice person.

In closing, this article came up when I was researching some of the interesting last names I saw at the internship. Cool article.

[Nabubrush]

It's cool, 'nev - some of my best friends are black, too.