[ibarw3] privilege

Following links from IBARW posts, I ended up looking at James Loewen's Sundown Towns project (there's an associated book):

From Maine to California, thousands of communities kept out African Americans (or sometimes Chinese Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.) by force, law, or custom. These communities are sometimes called "sundown towns" because some of them posted signs at their city limits reading, typically, "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Go Down On You In ___." Some towns are still all white on purpose. Their chilling stories have been joined more recently by the many elite (and some not so elite) suburbs like Grosse Pointe, MI, or Edina, MN, that have excluded nonwhites by "kinder gentler means." When I began this research, I expected to find about 10 sundown towns in Illinois (my home state) and perhaps 50 across the country. Instead, I have found more than 440 in Illinois and thousands across the United States. This is their story; it is the first book ever written on the topic.

There's a list of suspected Sundown Towns on the site and -- sadly unsurprisingly -- the town I lived in for the last six months -- and its nearest neighbor; we lived right on the border -- are on the list. They're probably not still Sundown Towns, but as recently as twenty years ago, within my lifetime, there are anecdotes about African Americans being driven out of town.

But the thing is, besides my absurd and awesome gladness to be back in an urban area, that this doesn't terrify me. It sickens me, and and it saddens me, but it doesn't terrify me to think about doing the grocery shopping in, driving in, fetching the mail in, taking a walk in, just LIVING IN, Anytown Kansas. Because I'm white. And I have privilege.