Southern Hospitality

So, I'm having a lot of anxiety about tomorrow. I need to write it out, just send it out to the internet void so I can get on with my life.

BTW: If you're not pigmented and you're reading this, I'm sorry if this offends you. I'm just being honest about my experience. This is the fear talking.



I have a job that requires me to travel to clinics. It's quick and painless. I actually like it a lot. I just don't like when I go to small towns far away.

There's an entire brand in romance that specializes in small town romance and it gives me the hebeejeebees (sp, I know, but no idea how to spell that word). I don't like small towns. Small towns to me create concentrated hate for people who don't belong in their clan.

Small Southern towns...well, usually it's like...hell, how do I say this?...When I get to those places, I feel like there's an immediate spotlight on me by its residents.

It's not my imagination. I mean, even in the city, a few people ask what I am. And there's like a million (maybe more) people in ATL.

The staring is one thing, but it's knowing how different I look and struggling to blend in and failing to. I don't know if this is racist (it probably is...anytime you ask if this is racist, you're probably going there) but I don't see any brown people. If I see another brown person, I will relax some but I don't.

I just see white people. White Southern people who are staring at me with suspicious eyes.

And even though they're polite, I know I'm an outsider in their town. I have nightmares about being chased out of small Southern towns with fire and pitchforks.

These places usually decorate their lawns and cars and businesses with the Confederate flag. I go into a cold sweat when I see it proudly hung like that. Like they're acknowledging that their family owned people and they're not ashamed of it. In fact, would welcome a return to that way of things.

My mind is screaming, "Don't go near those people. They're xenophobic homophobic bigots and they'll kill you because you're pigmented and a girl. And that's after they do all kinds of other horrible things to you because they think you're lesser."

The impression I have of the small town's South is not a pretty one. I've lived here for almost twenty years and have yet to feel welcome when I go outside Atlanta. And I mean welcome in the sense where you can be yourself instead of the polite, fake nice thing. (You know, the fart-and-burp kind of welcome?)

I'm tense, right now. My stomach is closing into a fist. I already know I'm not going to sleep well tonight. I'm ready for tomorrow afternoon to get here so I can relax.

I know that being white in the South doesn't mean you hate everyone who isn't white. Racism exists everywhere. But historically, these places, small Southern towns I mean, are where that sort of ugliness got bred from. The dead carcass of slavery is still rotting up their air. I can smell it when I get out of my car's safety.

Can't you?