The Other: Bike Traveling Eastern U.S.

Selma, Alabama

Racial separation and apparent paranoia of “the other” has been a trending observation as I’ve rode through the South. From Virginia, to where I currently rest in Louisiana, I’ve pedaled through white neighborhoods, then black neighborhoods, then white, then black, and so on.

Yesterday, I shared a 2-pound bag of boiled crawfish in a Mississippi park with two black women. Before they invited me to dig into the local flavor, they said, “Don’t worry, we like white people.”

As much as I appreciated the experience, I hated that it needed to be prefaced with a statement of such. Honestly, I wish this just weren’t an issue, that we were blind to color. But that’s idealistic of me. Black populations have worked hard to develop a cultural identity in the South from the moment they were brought over as slaves. And that work is being lost in the progression of gentrified neighborhoods, and environmental degradation targeted in their communities. They have a reason to be weary of white people.

I’ve wanted to make some sort of public observation of the racial paranoia I have noticed. But it’s too complex for a trite statement on "loving the other."  All I can say is that I am personally unsettled with the fear that seems to exist between neighbors. I couldn’t even give you a number of times I have been told to watch out for the “the blacks” in a certain neighborhood... only to pass through that neighborhood and find a kind black woman offering to buy me a soda. There seems to not be an absence of face behind “the scary other.” And maybe that’s the biggest problem of all.

I spent some time in the iconic Africatown in Mobile, Alabama, where the supposed last slave ship was found. I met members of the Elks Lodge Community working to keep their dwindling culture alive, fighting against air pollution killing the trees once flourishing in fruits. Their ancestors were illegally brought over to America in a sleazy bet, and they cultivated a land that resembled their homeland in Africa. Remnants of that land is becoming harder and harder to hold on to, but the fight is strong.
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We have so far to come as a nation and we may never arrive there. There’s not an easy solution or concept to settle on, but the best notion I have found is to remember that we are all part of the problem and maybe the best service we can offer is a listening heart.

Selma, Alabama