The Color Lines Run down the Block
In these two excerpts, we are brought into abrupt contact with racism, subtle and otherwise, as two women strive to reconcile their African background with American politics and ideology. Interracial marriage has been legal in the United States for many years but legality doesn’t necessarily erase or even blur the lines when two cultures collide.
One woman becomes disillusioned by her white boyfriend when he proves to be casually indifferent about her customs, careless about money and debt, eager to sponge off her cooking and cagey about many aspects of his private life. In a few short pages, we see her carefully constructed affair with him disintegrate. But, like many emotional people, it’s hard for her to let the relationship dissolve as it should.
Another story is more harrowing, as a woman is made the victim of racist cops eager to fill some kind of quota and clean up the streets. She is immediately beset by a rapacious lawyer, her angry husband and a roommate who constantly criticizes what she should do or not do. She comes off as a genuinely caring person, in a world that punishes people like her. She wishes to rely on the kindness of strangers but realizes that such kindness will not be extended.
These stories are depressing without any real rays of hope. But you can’t turn away from them because of that. They point out the flaws in our world and in the humans who occupy it. Racism, sexism, nationalism won’t go away because we stick our heads in the sand or declare ourselves to be “woke”. If the other stories are as forceful as these, your eyes can’t help but be opened even as we wince from the harsh light shone into them.
One woman becomes disillusioned by her white boyfriend when he proves to be casually indifferent about her customs, careless about money and debt, eager to sponge off her cooking and cagey about many aspects of his private life. In a few short pages, we see her carefully constructed affair with him disintegrate. But, like many emotional people, it’s hard for her to let the relationship dissolve as it should.
Another story is more harrowing, as a woman is made the victim of racist cops eager to fill some kind of quota and clean up the streets. She is immediately beset by a rapacious lawyer, her angry husband and a roommate who constantly criticizes what she should do or not do. She comes off as a genuinely caring person, in a world that punishes people like her. She wishes to rely on the kindness of strangers but realizes that such kindness will not be extended.
These stories are depressing without any real rays of hope. But you can’t turn away from them because of that. They point out the flaws in our world and in the humans who occupy it. Racism, sexism, nationalism won’t go away because we stick our heads in the sand or declare ourselves to be “woke”. If the other stories are as forceful as these, your eyes can’t help but be opened even as we wince from the harsh light shone into them.