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Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2002 / 11:50 a.m. ~Why Do I Even Try?~ Something really unsettling happened this morning. As I left my apartment to get into my car to come to work, I saw the man who sweeps up around the complex. I see him every morning, at different spots, sometimes just as I'm pulling onto the street, sometimes as I'm paused to look for oncoming traffic leaving the complex, sometimes as I'm exiting my building. Every morning, the same bald headed black man, young, attractive, muscular, sweeping, carting his big trash can around with him, with the same near-scowl on his face. He looks away, every morning. I won't say hello to someone who is not even looking at me, normally� This morning, he was feet from me, walking towards me, feet, literally, maybe 10, maybe 15, looking down at whatever object he was considering picking up to put in his sweeper, so I said, �Good morning� to his scowly, handsome face, his eyes looking down, like they were unable to look up at all. He ignored me. I was shocked. I'm so tired of my neighbors, and all the people at the complex not even making eye contact with me. It's rare that someone does. I go in my apartment and shut it all out. I always think it's because I�m white and they're black. I don�t know if that's it at all. I stopped in my tracks, I watched him continue, looking at the ground, sweeping up pieces of trash I couldn't even see, he looked at me, right at me, no, RIGHT AT ME, said nothing. There was no noise, no obstruction to what I'd said, he looked right at me with the intent of ignoring me, then said, �What?�, I said, �You were looking right at me� � wrong, the wrong thing to say, I should I have said, �I said �Good Morning��. He says, �I was NOT looking at you�, implying I�d had a problem initially with him eyeing me, which, no, he was not, he never looks at me, my point you see. I was appalled. I couldn�t believe it, it had this HUGE effect on me. Here, I'd made an effort, I see this man every single morning, and I didn't want to think of him as some sort of servant, I wanted to humanize him, to greet him, to be �friendly�, totally out of character for me, but I don't like to ignore someone who is standing mere feet from me, especially when we are the only two people within eyesight. It was really hard for me to try to break that ice wall between us. Really hard. As I got in my car he was still there, moving about, sweeping, and I turned to him, he looked at me, and I said, �I'm sorry, I was just trying to be friendly�, and he mumbled, �You have a good day�. But I felt so horrible, I still feel it, I'm so overwhelmed by it. I want to know if it was a race issue. Does he hate white people? Is it me? Why should he dislike me? He doesn�t even know me. Why do I experience these sorts of interchanges with people? Why did I try? Should I have not attempted to catch his eye at all? Should I have addressed him as �boy�? Is that what he expects from white people? I am having horrible racist tendencies lately. I'm a racial minority here at work, I�m surrounded by black people. Here, and at home, and I was never prejudiced in my life until I experienced racism directed towards me. Now, I'm so sensitive to it, I feel like every black person I see automatically hates me. I used to go to my favorite club, dance all night, and it was young people, black, white, Asian, gay, straight, and we felt so good together. I met black men, I dated black men, my best friend was a black man. I was naive, as we have established recently, I am still naive. I'm forced to recognize our differences now, and we are not the same. We have bodies which function in the same manner, but that's it. We are worlds apart. And all the bleeding heart white liberals who want us all to be one big happy world�s family are deceiving themselves. Black people don�t want to be one with white people. They hate us. In general. They're filled with resentment. And it's quite possible that the hunky young bald man who sweeps up every morning just naturally hates me. It's possible that when I said, �You were looking right at me� he didn�t understand that I meant he looked right at me, right in the eye, and ignored me after I said, �Good Morning�. I didn't mean I had a problem with him looking at me in general. I don't know. I want to go live in a cave. Every experience I have lately reaffirms my dislike for humanity. Every single experience. It's getting worse and worse, and I really don't know how to stop it. I feel like I�m losing my composure. And my mind along with it. I wanted to break down crying this morning as I drove off. One more misunderstanding, one more peculiar experience that made no sense at all. Something else left hanging. I wanted to go back, to stand right in front of him and ask him, �What's your problem? I see you every single morning, cleaning up after the stupid fucks who live here, who throw their trash all over the place, you have this shit job, and I know all about shit jobs, and I wanted to say hello to you, but you stared at me instead, you fucking ignored me, I know you heard me, what is your damned deal?!��but what good would it do? And what about tomorrow morning? What about the next time? I have to renew my lease, but I don't even want to. I love my apartment, but it�s not perfect. Still, where would I go? I can't afford to move. I don't want to move. But I can't even be outside. It's nothing but people who walk past, sometimes within inches, and refuse to acknowledge my existence. I don�t know my neighbors, they don�t know me, it's nice sometimes, but I can't help but feel it's racial hatred. It's resentment because I'm white. I won't even mention some of the thoughts I have sometimes. Me, the person who wasn't raised to be this way at all, it's learned behavior, it's life experience shattering any ideals I may have once held. It's fairly horrible. Cost of the War in Iraq
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