Sunday, April 19, 2015

Color Me Privileged

Arden is a white neighborhood. While we do have socio-economic diversity, there is no getting around the fact that racially, we are homogenous. We have a Wilmington address, though plenty of people will designate the area we live in as North Wilmington. I am not sure how that figures into statistics of Wilmington as a city. Are we included? The city of Wilmington has a population of about 70,000 people. 58% African American, 33% white. Separated into neighborhoods. Our daughter went to a high school where white and black were about even in terms of numbers. Compare that to our son's high school in Denver, PA, where the population was 99% white.

I was glad that Maren was going to experience the mix, but I was naive about what that meant exactly. Just as the neighborhoods in Wilmington form around race lines, so do the cafeteria tables. Maren was able to navigate these lines and even cross over to an extent. She is a confident girl with crazy hair. She was often asked if she was mixed race. (We've had genetic testing for genealogy purposes--nothing in our background explains the hair.) Interestingly enough, it was always black students who asked her if she was mixed. Never the white. She has African American friends. Maren played the lead in Hairspray, the musical put on by her high school. A good choice considering the make-up of the student population. But even at cast dinners for a play about racial integration, the kids arranged themselves at tables by the color of their skin.

I am not comfortable writing about race, but I need to acknowledge the changes I have experienced since moving to Arden. While most all of my neighbors are white, I encounter people of color on a daily basis. I didn't before the move, with the exception being the Indian family that ran the Dunkin' Donuts. I don't think that seeing African Americans out in the world makes me confront their blackness as much as it makes me confront my whiteness. What does it mean to be a white woman? I never really had to consider it before.

I get that I can be friendly, say hello, make small talk with people of other races, but I sense a line I can't cross. Wilmington is murder capital of the country at the moment.  Murdertown USA is not a title any city wants. Newsweek sent reporters to profile us. I'm not scared. It isn't my neighborhood that is contentious. Does that mean I am free to look away? Our friend, Joe, recently rode along with Wilmington police to take photos in the different neighborhoods for an upcoming local magazine piece. He isn't sure what the magazine is going to say about the neighborhoods or in what ways his photos will be used. He recounted some of his experiences to us.  In some sections of the city, he was pretty much guaranteed that he would have been robbed if it he had not been under the protection of police for the photoshoot. Why? Because he would have stuck out as white and therefore a stranger, which is funny because Joe vehemently denies being white. He is coy about his actual heritage, preferring to blend in where he can and keep people guessing.

The problem affects the economy of Wilmington as some people won't even go to downtown to take a meeting, much less patronize a business. As I have said before, I am not afraid to venture downtown, even alone. We go to galleries First Friday or to see shows at the Queen. We have dined well in city restaurants. But I cannot say that we have been unaffected. In Arden, we have to lock our doors, not because of our neighbors who have our keys anyway, but because we fear being burgled by drug users from the city. Crime sprees happen here. Usually minor ones. We have a security system in our home. I never lived with a security system before, although I should note that my old neighborhood in Reinholds experienced break-ins soon after we moved out. I'm not even saying that the reason we need security system is because of race. But there is a world of haves and haves not, and living in Arden, I am aware of my privilege in a way I never have been before.

If you look back into Wilmington's history, you will find that from April 1968 until January 1969, the National Guard was a presence in the city to quell the potential for race-related rioting after Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. It is the only such National Guard occupation in the history of this country. If you look deeper still you find a state that wasn't quite sure which side of the Civil War it was on. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, Delaware was a slave state in which slavery was dwindling to the point that it made little impact on the economy. It was a border state that was considered a Northern State by some because Delaware posed no risk of secession. Delaware sons fought on both sides of the Civil War. One hundred fifty years later, do we Delawareans identify as North or South? Food can tell the real story. We are both. Delaware aligns itself with the Mid-Atlantic (and my personal PA Dutch heritage) for its scrapple obsession, but Southern fried chicken is a thing here. Race and identification is just part of the story. Unemployment and family dynamics play their parts as well.

What all this means for me as someone who has moved in from lily white Lancaster County countryside is that I have to think about race for the first time. I am not always comfortable acknowledging the advantages of my skin color. And I shouldn't be. But I am a Delawarean now, and we are a people who live on the edge. Wilmington is desperately trying to figure out what will work to bring about change to those statistics nobody wants. It's going to involve a social inventory with its own fair share of discomfort.





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