Friday, May 22, 2009
When mom was here visiting for graduation, she asked me if I was going to start blogging again. I honestly hadn't really given the blog much thought lately. By the last semester of school, I felt I had nothing left to write on here. School sapped most of my creative energy, and more writing sounded like the last thing I wanted to do.
I'm two weeks past my last final, last paper and last class, and I still don't know the long term plans for this blog, but today I woke up with something to say, so here ya go, mom!
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We recently moved into a lovely little house, and I am still exploring our new surroundings--finding the nearest grocery store, gas station, and the quickest routes around town.
For the first time in my life, I live in a mixed neighborhood. I'm sitting on the couch in front of the living room window, and I just watched a young white mom with 3 kids walk by with her jogger stroller. Not 5 minutes behind her were two young black men who looked about as far away from the definition of 'yuppy' as possible. It's not news to me that both of these groups share the city of Atlanta. But it is surprising to me that they both live in the same neighborhood.
Throughout my runs (ok, mostly walks) around the neighborhood, I've seen this over and over. Big, renovated houses next to small, dated ranch-style homes. SUVs sharing the rode with bass-thumping low riders. Black families living next to white ones, poor people next door to rich ones.
I'm excited to see what this neighborhood has to offer, but I also have to admit that living here thus far has presented its personal challenges. Though we've only moved about 2 miles from where we used to live, the history and racial dynamics of this neighborhood couldn't be more different. At Decatur Station (the rail station on ATL's public transit that closest to both our new home and our old apartment), there are 2 bus options. The #19 goes north from the station to our old neighborhood. That bus is usually almost empty, and mostly white. The #15, my new bus that heads south from the station to our new neighborhood is always packed, and I've always been among less than 5 white people on the bus.
I know that this dichotomy has lots to do with zoning laws and civil rights and segregation that still run so deep in the south. And to be honest, I always knew that it existed--I noticed the differences in the 15 and the 19 busses when we first moved here. But now I am a rider on the 15. And that feels very different.
I have been forced to come face to face with my own prejudices. I angered myself the other day when I parked my scooter in the Kroger down on Memorial (which is now the closest one to our house) and worried for a second about whether or not it would get stolen. I wondered whether I should wear my purse around my shoulder instead of putting it in the cart. I eye the black walkers in the neighborhood with more suspicion than the white ones. For the first time ever, I worry our house my get broken into, or our scooter might get stolen out of the driveway.
I should say here that during the entire 3 years that we lived near Emory, we never locked our doors. Wes didn't even lock up his bike most days unless we were leaving town. Friends made fun of us for this choice, and warned us that we were asking for it. Maybe they were right. But I think the reason we chose to risk it was because we deeply want to trust people. We felt like the fact that we knew our neighbors made us safe--not the locks on the doors. And we felt like leaving our house unlocked made a statement--if only to ourselves--that people are basically trustworthy, and that locking our doors every time we stepped out of the house was a false reminder that our haven was always threatened by attack from the "outsiders."
Our new house has an alarm system (and a surround sound system that is our landlord's and I would feel awful if it got stolen because of our stubbornness). I hate using it, which is no surprise. And it does make me realize that part of what goes into making us "feel" safe is how we choose to think about our possessions, and our neighbors. Why do I feel less safe with an alarm system than I did leaving the door to our crappy apartment unlocked?
Or maybe it's not the alarm system. Maybe it's that my new neighborhood contains lots of people who don't look like me. I don't know why, and I can't explain the prejudices that I see in myself, but for some reason, humans seem to see difference as threatening. I perceive difference as threatening.
I hope that living here will teach me that different is just different.
