Geography of Racism

While white ppl are gobbling up books about race and making them NYTimes best sellers, I would also like to add blk ppl are different not only class, but by geography b/c the land influenced the kind of racism we faced. Slavery is often thought of this monolith. But most of the states did not have slavery and the states that did have it employed different systems that ranged from the oppressive industrial cotton farms of Mississippi to semi-independent enslaved ppl on South Carolina islands who were left to their own devices, to shipyard enslaved ppl in Baltimore that were more blacksmiths and tradesmen living in cities. My mom grew up in the hills of Winsboro, South Carolina. Hill regions weren't conducive to big farm slavery systems so she grew up around a region that was historically...mostly poor white and black people who lived in a symbiotic relationship; not b/c white ppl were more enlightened or nicer in Winsboro...but b/c their form of racism wasn't steeped in the horrors of industrial farming and massive slave quarters. The land wasn't rich enough for that kind fo farming. Yes, there was racism but it was more layered b/c the farming system was a collective of medium and small-sized owners. Sharecroppers had more negotiating power as oppose to big wealthy landowners. A black person from Baltimore could have a family who were all skilled, educated workers for centuries b/c that was the kind of work done.

Some times I talk to a blk person from the deep South and they look at me like I'm 'off.' I grew up in Miami...which didn't really have a slavery system b/c the land was swamp until the 1950s. And then I grew up in a culture that wasn't binary -black and white- but that had 10 different race and ethnic groups flowing together. I am less likely to think of society in terms of black and white, and more likely to see it as black, Jamaican, Caribbean, Cuban, Venezuelan, white ppl from NYC, white ppl from Northern Florida, Mexicans, Jamaican Chinese, Peruvian Japanese, French. My blackness and my relationship to others isn't better than a someone from Alabama...it's just different and formed by the literal geography of my birthplace.

Personally I struggle with binary stories of just white and black. Not because they're unimportant. It's hard for me focus on them. The world I grew up in usually involved dozens of small ethnic groups shifting under white patriarchy... struggling, backstabbing, running ahead, falling back.

You wouldn't look at a white person who works on Wall Street and comes from Boston Brahmin family in the same way as a white person from Kentucky who came from slave owners. Well the same is true for black people...a brother from Watts is different from someone in Harlem is different from beach dude in Myrtle Beach. Each one is authentically black. We are more than the most extreme version of white oppression.