Self-Segregating?: Part 2
Neighborhood Intimacy
Intimacy: “an emotional state in which two persons, or a group, have a sense of commonality, of sharing, and security.” ~Wong H.
Polarized
I recall stories from my grandfather about his time serving during WWII and what it was like to finally own a house across the street from a white family.
It was one of the indicators that he’d secured part of the American Dream.
No one burned a cross on the lawn nor called him the n-word, and he didn’t call them “crackas”. Their children knew one another, played together and the block shared a collective commitment for keeping eyes out on one another’s property. There was a connection. Who knows what the political affiliations were? I was raised on that block, and in that household, situated among a community of families that fused closer together after the race riots in Detroit…years before my birth.
I didn’t have that in my current neighborhood, and I became sick, when for the first time I thought that perhaps it was because of my skin color. I stopped using the Facebook group and the NextDoor app immediately. Feelings would chill my spirit like a cold northeastern wind anytime I read the comment sections…
