Still thinking about the crazy woman who attacked me

[webcowgirl]

In keeping with the "week of no sleep," I had a hard time getting to sleep last night and was up at about 6 AM this morning. My heart was pounding far too hard for me to sleep - clearly, still riding an adrenaline rush from the attack at the park (although I was hoping the game of Puerto Rico I played at Stephanie's last night would have distracted me sufficiently to allow me to forget about it - or the book I was reading last night, Kushiel's Dart, sort of absorbing along the Wraethu/Interview with the Vampire mode - but as soon as the distractions stopped the bad movie started playing over in my head).

So in between fantasies about how I should have knocked her down and pounded on her instead of just blocking her blows with my arms and my knees, I was wondering if she was going to be back at the park and go ballistic on me (or her husband). I really don't like the idea of being worried about going back to my favorite park. (It was so depressing to creep into my house after I left the cops behind yesterday - afraid that the crazy woman or her husband would see me walking in my door and come after me later.)

And of course I've been stewing over her parting remarks about "you people moved into the neighborhood and now you think you own it" and what her husband was saying to their two little kids as mom was loaded into the cop car (after saying stuff to the cops that would have resulted in, I think, some bruises had she said them in Arizona): "You see? That is what the white man's policeman does. He throws your mother around, then he takes her away from you." They were too young to really remember what he was saying - I'm sure he was just saying it to get at the cops - but between the two of them the degree of white hatred they emanated, and were doing their best to pass along to their kids, was just stunningly disturbing. I feel like I was raised to be color blind. How did things change so much, and when did it happen? Any why do these folks say "it's about color" instead of reflecting on their own behavior? And why did this woman think I was a "you people" when she looked like a "me people" except for the fact she was psycho? Was it economic, or was it because I wasn't a member of whatever religion she belonged to?

Comments

Reason number 182 of "Why many white kids want to leave the South"

[sallysimpleton.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry this happened! I was really disheartened that she basically called you a racist, since you aren't racist in the slightest. You are color blind, from everything I've seen.

I've come to figure that it's so much easier for poorly behaved individuals to use race as an excuse, rather than looking at themselves (and what they can change).

Unfortunately, I don't think it's changed or become worse in recent times, at least in the last hundred years. If anything has changed, maybe they're just more willing to be vocal about it in the last 30 years. I had to deal with comments like the ones you received on a routine basis in the south, since the neighborhood I grew up in was racially mixed (the neighborhood was about 60% middle class black/40% middle class, mostly yankee, whites) and I had to listen to this sort of crap since I attended desegregated schools where emotions were already heightened as it was. I am still shocked at the comments I used to hear as a child when folks thought they were in "safe company" (both blacks and whites said terrible things).

I don't think yesterdays events were economic or religious, either. They just boil down to the fact that you are white and she was angry.

Gentrification

[sallysimpleton.livejournal.com]

Also, where does she get off accusing you of moving in and owning the neighborhood??? If a white person said that about black families trying to move into overly white neighborhoods, could you imagine the uproar???