The reading list was nearly one-hundred percent white male writers. I never had a Black professor and Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the only race-related book I studied. I studied literature and went on to pursue a Master of Arts in English. After several failed attempts, it became obvious that it was difficult to find a landlord as one of them was mixed. Three of my friends were looking for a place to rent. Locals spoke with Southern accents and were not happy with the influx of Black students from Chicago and Saint Louis. I went to college in Southern Illinois which, though I didn’t realize it until I visited that part of the state, was the South. I don’t know what Willie thought or if he even noticed that Pearl would not eat a lunch fixed by a Black person. If Willie was working the grill, Linda, who didn’t usually do the cooking, got up from her stool at the counter and not so discreetly put the meat patty on the grill and fixed Pearl’s sandwich. She was friends with Linda, one of my bosses. There was a white lady named Pearl who came frequently for lunch. One of them, Willie, was a cook who ran the grill. I had a job at a drive-in restaurant by the Black neighborhood and my bosses hired a rare Black teenager from time to time. Starting public high school was my first close contact with Black people although I had almost no interactions with them. There was a town close by where no Black families could buy a house. This was during an interview with Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC who followed up by asking Sanchez if she had had this sense of danger, why wasn’t security adequate at the Capitol? Sanchez, in response to Wallace’s question about how she had this foreboding, said that the nature of all the incendiary rhetoric of white militia members gave her a heads up. After all she loved Nat King Cole and enjoyed seeing my little sister watch Julia on tv.Ĭalifornia Democrat Congresswoman Linda Sanchez said that before coming to work on Wednesday, January 6 to certify the Electoral College vote, she told her husband Tuesday night where her last will and testament was located. My mother was kinder and race seemed less of an issue for her. I never heard them use the N word though my father used another slur a couple of times.
My parents didn’t comment on black people. When I was in fifth grade we moved to another town in northeastern Illinois that had one section where Black people resided. My dad kept driving in search of another park. I could feel the telepathy between my parents in the front seat. I had the strange sensation in my body that they were too unfamiliar to be safe. From the back seat I saw my first Black people-sitting on picnic tables or gathered in groups, children on the swings and slides.
When we drove through a park in a much larger town, my parents didn’t stop for our picnic. I’d never been to a big city or seen the ocean.
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