Short History of Oak Park

“As I stepped over the curb, I became excruciatingly aware of my skin color [white], and my heart pounded with social anxiety.”  She “got stares.”  She “was a stranger in a strange land.”

“[T]his shouldn’t be true,” she wrote.  She had sung “We Shall Overcome” at school assemblies, has had “black bosses,” has “written about Kwanzaa,” for gosh sakes.  She knows what Juneteenth is!  She has a black cousin! Glory be!

A strange land indeed, “one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods,” she says — she should try Lawndale or East Garfield.  It’s dangerous.  It has a “well-attended soup kitchen . . . and Austin families often visit my neighborhood to play in its parks or go trick-or-treating.  And dear heart, they beat people up in Taylor Park or Whittier school yard.

But the shooters of (hate) stares — What you doin’ here, girl? — “were from a woman in a high-end SUV and a man on a high-end motorcycle.”  So class is not the issue!  What’s left?

Meanwhile, back in Oak Park, it’s no better.  She knows black people no better over here.  She chats with them, mentioning Chris Rock or Barack Obama, but then changes the subject lest she seem overly race-conscious.  Good for her, but close call.

She’d like to ask about Condoleezza Rice and whether it’s hard for atheists among them, they being so church-oriented, and what whites get wrong about them on a regular basis — questions she’d put to a German or Pakistani, but things she has never even asked her black cousin!  If she does, the cousin has my permission to sock her.  “We’re not integrated. We’re strangers,” she moans, apparently choking back a sob.

It’s her fault.  She’s guilty of “soft racism” and for all her sappy good will is “part of the problem.”  She won’t “admit our differences.”  She’s afraid to look foolish and thus learns nothing.  Lady, I am strongly tempted to say you will never learn anything.

She should try to get over herself, she concludes.  That much at least.

“As I stepped over the curb, I became excruciatingly aware of my skin color [white], and my heart pounded with social anxiety.”  She “got stares.”  She “was a stranger in a strange land.”

“[T]his shouldn’t be true,” she wrote.  She had sung “We Shall Overcome” at school assemblies, has had “black bosses,” has “written about Kwanzaa,” for gosh sakes.  She knows what Juneteenth is!  She has a black cousin! Glory be!

A strange land indeed, “one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods,” she says — she should try Lawndale or East Garfield.  It’s dangerous.  It has a “well-attended soup kitchen . . . and Austin families often visit my neighborhood to play in its parks or go trick-or-treating.  And dear heart, they beat people up in Taylor Park or Whttier school yard.

But the shooters of (hate) stares — What you doin’ here, girl? — “were from a woman in a high-end SUV and a man on a high-end motorcycle.”  So class is not the issue!  What’s left?

Meanwhile, back in Oak Park, it’s no better.  She knows black people no better over here.  She chats with them, mentioning Chris Rock or Barack Obama, but then changes the subject lest she seem overly race-conscious.  Good for her, but close call.

She’d like to ask about Condoleezza Rice and whether it’s hard for atheists among them, they being so church-oriented, and what whites get wrong about them on a regular basis — questions she’d put to a German or Pakistani, but things she has never even asked her black cousin!  If she does, the cousin has my permission to sock her.  “We’re not integrated. We’re strangers,” she moans, apparently choking back a sob.

It’s her fault.  She’s guilty of “soft racism” and for all her sappy good will is “part of the problem.”  She won’t “admit our differences.”  She’s afraid to look foolish and thus learns nothing.  Lady, I am strongly tempted to say you will never learn anything.

She should try to get over herself, she concludes.  That much at least.