Journal- March 19, 2011
The south is completely different than what I am used to. The food, people, and shopping is very different, yet similar to what I know.
The one thing I noticed that was different than most parts of Wisconsin is the diversity. Especially where I am from Wisconsin there are no African Americans. And at school, I’ve seen maybe six black people. And with ten thousand students, they are definitely a minority.
In Tennessee, there were some more black people than I am used to. But they were still not a majority. However, when we stopped in Atlanta, GA nearly every person I saw was black.
I went to the CNN center mostly with the people on my trip, so we weren’t that diverse. I found the CNN center to be okay. It was kind of neat watching the anchors do the broadcast live, but I find the tour overall to be a little dull.
After CNN, my friends and I went to the Atlanta Underground. I was not originally planning on going there, but I am really glad that I did. I saw so much of Southern culture that I probably would not have seen at the Aquarium or the Coca Cola museum. My friends and I (there were six of us) were probably the only white people in the underground mall. This was definitely a culture shock for me. I was not really bothered by it, but I did feel like I stuck out.
I pointed this out to one of my friends and she said, “Now you know what it’s like for black people in Wisconsin”. I had never truly thought about this before; what it would be like to be the only one of your skin color in a large group.
I have always wondered why black people would stay in the south when they were being terribly mistreated. Now I can kind of understand why they might want to stay. If you were the only one of your skin color in a large group, you might feel more comfortable being with people who are like you. I hope that as I grow older, there will be more diversity in every area of the US. Is this some kind of accident or are people consciously thinking that they want to live where people of their own skin color are living? But if we all live together, we can learn from each other and accept each other’s differences.
Hi Katrina,
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the problem with racism would be just as bad in Wisconsin if there were a large black population here. I think the extremes of racism - violence and assassination are often caused by fear and are a last resort when less obvious forms of coercion don't work. When there isn't a large black population to control, the white supremacist society doesn't need to go to these extremes to maintain its power.