Just want to say I read each one of your Racism Every Day articles, and your writing style is incredible. It puts a vision in my mind of these same tales I have experienced in my small town, especially the street lights. I really love how you broke down this story with sights and sounds, images and emotion. Thank you for writing this! I live outside of Boston, and I won’t say that is shocking what I read but it is extremely sad especially in California which you would think is a progressive state. Growing up you believe that racism is only something which exists in the deep woods of Alabama. You quickly realize that subtle racism is all around you and everywhere you turn. You cannot escape it. It’s engrained into the fabric of our communities that which separates us. It was extremely sad when you talked about the community festivals you organized and tried to put on.

These were my favorite lines…

“I learned about safety from books, movies, and tv shows, but I learned about danger from the neighborhoods that made my parents lock their car doors as we drove through. I learned about danger when my mother gasped and gripped the steering wheel when a Black man washed our windshield at an intersection. As I grew up, I learned that safety and danger were related to railroad tracks, houses vs apartments, and mostly, whether the faces I saw outside looked like mine or not.”

I thought this was a brilliant line...

“When we only interact with our larger community from behind the officious safety of a table, it is impossible to not internalize feelings of superiority.”

There is an old saying called Nimby. Not in my backyard.