thoughts of color

This past week I spent three days in Washington DC to attend a NOAA workshop on OHH at our headquarters in Silver Spring MD. I ended up getting a room at a hotel located almost due south from the capital dome, but with Interstate 395 in between. I could see the dome from my room, albeit with several industrial type buildings and the freeway in the foreground. As usual, getting around was not difficult because of the Metro system (including from the airport), although after arriving I did get off at a train station that was much farther from the hotel than I thought, and it took me quite a bit longer trekking through some rather seedy looking territory to get there.

While the meeting went well, and I got a chance to sightsee a little on my last day, that's actually not the reason I'm writing this. The point is more that I was in a largely black part of DC and it was clear that the neighborhood was a little rough. The plexiglass shield protecting the wait staff at a Taco Bell and a local gas station attest to that. It did tend to make me feel a little more vulnerable than usual. This made me wonder. Did I feel this way because of any real physical danger? Probably not, at least no more so than some parts of downtown Seattle. Being a white liberal, I would like to think that I would have no feelings of discomfort around people of color. But I have to admit, getting on a crowded subway train when you're the only white person, does feel different. I think this is where many of us may begin to understand what racism and prejudice feels like. I don't mean to suggest that I experienced this in any overt way. But I certainly felt what it means to be a minority.

After a day of this, I really felt more relaxed. Of course I was still wary. Not because of color. It still was a rough neighborhood.