It's funny, as I was reading it I kept thinking "I can't believe she'd feel that way if she lived here, in Oakland." It was a nice surprise to find out that she liked it when she got here.
I've lived and worked in Oakland for the last 13 years. Some of the people I work with, when we moved from Berkeley to Oakland, were afraid to be in Oakland. Of course, I didn't find this out until many years later, but it was shocking nonetheless.
When I travel to other places, like SC/NC, I (as a white male) feel alone and isolated. I just don't subscribe to the culture there anymore (I'm from KY). It feels foreign, sterile and separated. I really don't like being there, other than visiting with family.
Guns, racial separation, extreme anti-liberalism and, to some degree. It's also a place that fosters people being proudly ignorant. Anywhere that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are so popular just freaks me out.
A quick story:
I was visiting in 1999 because my step mother was ill. She was at the hospital at Duke. Everywhere I went in the hospital the cleaning and cooking staff was black and everyone else was white. At least in the area I was in. I was hanging out in a lounge area once and there was a group of older guys. One was telling a joke and used the N-word several times. A few feet away there was a black guy cleaning the floor. It seemed like a skit in some comedy show. I looked around and no one gave a shit but me.
Everywhere I went in the hospital, when I would encounter black people, they would never look me in the eye. Always their eyes were down and they called me "sir." I was like 34 and no one had ever addressed me like that. And, living in the Bay Area, I had never witnessed people of color being so deferential. It was shocking.
I've lived and worked in Oakland for the last 13 years. Some of the people I work with, when we moved from Berkeley to Oakland, were afraid to be in Oakland. Of course, I didn't find this out until many years later, but it was shocking nonetheless.
When I travel to other places, like SC/NC, I (as a white male) feel alone and isolated. I just don't subscribe to the culture there anymore (I'm from KY). It feels foreign, sterile and separated. I really don't like being there, other than visiting with family.