This is going to seem minor, but it was a shock to me.
I grew up in Texas. I lived in very metropolitan places – near downtown Dallas, and near the Houston medical center. So I never thought that I was culturally isolated or anything.
When I finally left the state for a job, I went to Los Angeles, circa 2007. In my first week there, a lady pulled up next to me on the street and asked me where the courthouse was. I had a vague idea, but explained that I was new to the area so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt. People familiar with the LAX area will know that the nearby courthouse is a tall building with something resembling a crown or halo, I pointed her toward that.
It wasn’t until a couple of minutes later I realized what seemed strange about the encounter. The lady was of African-American descent.
I thought back on 3 decades of living in Texas, and I cannot once remember being approached by a black stranger and asked a question. Not one single time. Houston has a large homeless population, I had many encounters with panhandlers. I couldn’t remember one single black person.
In fact, as I thought about it, a HUGE difference between Texas and California was that black folks on the street behaved very differently. In California, they looked you in the eye, they said “hello”, etc. In Texas – at least, up until I left in 2007 – black folks were strictly “heads down, eyes on your own business”. Even thinking back on some black friends and co-workers, I realized that they behaved very differently in public than my white friends did.
The whole thing made me sad for my black friends back in Texas. And now that we know how police treat black folks, I guess I can see why they behaved the way they did.
I moved from California to Texas, and that has not been my experience at all since getting here. Perhaps it’s the city I live in, but black people here seem no different than any other person, same as my experience when I lived in California. The percentage of the population that is black here is much, much higher, though.
I’ve lived in Houston my whole life and I have no idea what this guy is talking about. It’s one of the most diverse cities in the country of course we talk to each other lol.
Same here in Houston. I have no clue what this person is talking about. I have had many black people talk to me, and I work with quite a few. There’s nothing odd about our encounters.
This is going to seem minor, but it was a shock to me.
I grew up in Texas. I lived in very metropolitan places – near downtown Dallas, and near the Houston medical center. So I never thought that I was culturally isolated or anything.
When I finally left the state for a job, I went to Los Angeles, circa 2007. In my first week there, a lady pulled up next to me on the street and asked me where the courthouse was. I had a vague idea, but explained that I was new to the area so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt. People familiar with the LAX area will know that the nearby courthouse is a tall building with something resembling a crown or halo, I pointed her toward that.
It wasn’t until a couple of minutes later I realized what seemed strange about the encounter. The lady was of African-American descent.
I thought back on 3 decades of living in Texas, and I cannot once remember being approached by a black stranger and asked a question. Not one single time. Houston has a large homeless population, I had many encounters with panhandlers. I couldn’t remember one single black person.
In fact, as I thought about it, a HUGE difference between Texas and California was that black folks on the street behaved very differently. In California, they looked you in the eye, they said “hello”, etc. In Texas – at least, up until I left in 2007 – black folks were strictly “heads down, eyes on your own business”. Even thinking back on some black friends and co-workers, I realized that they behaved very differently in public than my white friends did.
The whole thing made me sad for my black friends back in Texas. And now that we know how police treat black folks, I guess I can see why they behaved the way they did.
This was not the kind of answer I was expecting. Thank you for sharing.
I moved from California to Texas, and that has not been my experience at all since getting here. Perhaps it’s the city I live in, but black people here seem no different than any other person, same as my experience when I lived in California. The percentage of the population that is black here is much, much higher, though.
I’ve lived in Houston my whole life and I have no idea what this guy is talking about. It’s one of the most diverse cities in the country of course we talk to each other lol.
Same here in Houston. I have no clue what this person is talking about. I have had many black people talk to me, and I work with quite a few. There’s nothing odd about our encounters.