Maybe she forgives you for leaving Alabama without doing all you could to eliminate racism there. It seems you just ran away from the problem and found someplace you could be comfortable.

It seems common these days for disadvantaged peoples to blame those of us from privileged backgrounds for all the worlds problems. Which of us could not have done more, few of us are saints.

Like yourself, I did not consider myself to be a person from a privileged background. I grew up in rural central Maine, never even saw a black person until I was in High School. We were middle class in our community which in such a poor community as not very advantaged. We were integrated, Catholics and Protestants went to school together :-)

I know now that my privilege was actually very great. It was not what we had that made us privileged but what we did not have. We did not have crime, violence, lack of natural spaces, limited recreation, racial tensions, hunger and homelessness. You might ask how I could live in a poor community and there not be hunger and homelessness. In that small community there was nobody so bad that someone would not take them in when they were in need. They might get shuffled from friend to neighbor to family and such but nobody would be left to freeze or starve.

I don’t think a church in town would have kept the members of the one black family away. They would have been allowed if possibly not truly accepted.

I can understand running away from the Jim Crow South. I ran to it, well actually it was after the Jim Crow era. I moved to Florida in 1976. I was not discriminated against as much as people of color but I was certainly treated as an outsider and call a Yankee. I learn to not underestimate persons who spoke with a drawl. They were not all ignorant yokels like I saw on TV.

TEK