midnyte

On a working level:

Since i have been in my teens i have worked Maintenance. The first place i worked for was a ski resort. The entire maintenance staff was white, even the summer help was white. I think it had more to do with the area than anything else, the ski resort is located in a primarily white area and the seasonal workers were usually college kids on winter break. To honestly tell you the truth, i can't remember anyone of a different race actually working there. There was one black and one asian ski patroller, but they were volunteer staff. It never dawned on me to talk to them about what they thought simply because i don't think on that level, unfortunately i am one of those people that is obtuse, and really doesn't think about the situation. I saw them as people, not as race.

I think where i experienced the most segregation was when i went to work at the steel mill. I saw the same thing you saw at your office and at your home. Black workers were hired for lesser jobs even though they were completely capable of doing the higher end jobs, and only a few actually held higher paying or supervisory positions. But they needed work, they couldn't turn down the money. Steel mills pay somewhat well and i think they ran into the same thing that you were speaking of. The networking was where it came from. You could go be on a non-union electrician at some place for say $16 an hour, or you could go be labor at the mill for $22 an hour, with union benefits. I know for a fact some of the people dumbed themselves down to take a labor position.

When we ate lunch, it was like actually taking a step back in time. It was like the lunch room was segregated. Blacks on one side and Whites on the other. When i sat down with a black co-worker on the other side of the lunch room, people looked at me like i was on fire. There were some people that were out-right racists there. I swear, straight out of the backwoods carrying a noose around. What made it even worse was that management never did anything to correct the behavior, they ignored it, in hopes that it would work itself out. That doesn't work. It usually led to high stress situations, and you know steel-workers. It's not like they sit down and talk things out, it usually ended up in someone going at someone, and creating a larger gap.

I hated it there. For multiple reasons, but that was one of the big ones. It sincerely felt like when i went to work i was taking a step back into the 1950's. I talked to everyone, i treated everyone the same and i honestly think that held me back in certain situations, there was a few like me, everyone was judged by who they were not what color they were, but we were in the minority. It also worked both ways. As much as there were extremist whites, there was extremist black people. It ran the whole gambit. There were different levels of tolerance, and it seems like the people that were the most tolerant of race were usually looked down upon by the majority of extremists.

I am not a fan of the word "nigger", in so much it makes me grind my teeth when i hear it. 80,000 words in the English language, and the only way some moron knows how to express himself is to use that word. I am quite surprised i never lost it. I eventually got laid off, i can't say it bothered me.

I have had a few other positions since then. The last job i left, the entire management staff was white, and the entire production staff was black. The Maintenance crew was mixed. But if you stood back and listened, management would use some very...."iffy" phrases. "Those people" and they would definitely treat production workers different than they treated maintenance workers, or other white management members.

It was weird. Definitely another instance where i felt like i was walking into the past.

In my city:

I live in a city that is 90%+ white. Houses around here go for about 125k. I can remember only one black family living on my street, about 6 years ago. They moved in a few houses down from me. I went over and made chit-chat with them, where they are from, where they moved from and it was a rather pleasant conversation. We talked a couple weeks later.

Unfortunately the reason we talked was because i was apologizing for my race. A local high school student had burned an 8-foot cross in their front yard.

It was kind of cool though, our little niche here kind of came out and i realized i have pretty good neighbors. We helped them reseed the grass, clean up what was left of the cross and basically in about a day, you wouldn't have even realized it had happened. We kind of made it into an outing, they started grilling, my mom brought down potato salad, the other neighbors brought other stuff. It kind of made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside and actually gave me hope that people aren't bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.

They eventually moved out, he was transferred at work and the family followed the job. They have been the only black family that ever lived on this street. Our immediate neighborhood is still 99% white, and the city itself is still either in the low 90 or high 80 percentile in white population.