my strange neighborhood
Oct. 28th, 2004 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smileswhfI don't know what my thing is, but frequently in my adult life I have ended up living in barrios. This is odd when you consider that I grew up in a rich, white suburb referred to by me and my highschool cell mates alternately as argonia or boxland. Needless to say, I've come down in life. So now I live in a quaint hollywood bungalow duplex place. It's pink. It's also in not the greatest neighborhood. Truth be told, I hate where I live. I don't hate it because I got shot at in the middle of the intersection 2 blocks from my house. That actually made living here more interesting. I hate it because visually the neighborhood has absolutely nothing to recommend it. It is, if I dare say it, a pit. What's more, it's a pit without parking.
Across the street from my house is a strip mall with a couple of run down businesses. One of them is a "learning center" that does some amount of after-school tutoring. All of their clients park in front of my door depriving me of reasonable parking. When this happens, I park in their parking lot. They have never complained to me about this. I don't know if they realize how miserable I could make their lives if I start complaining to the city or they just don't care. I suspect they don't care. No matter. A couple of weeks ago, I had parked in their lot over night and was doing my usual late-for-work hurried stumble to the car when this woman came up to me and asked if I clean offices. Say what? So she asks me again if I clean offices. Uh, no, sorry, I park here because I live across the street. Smile and nod and drive away. That was weird. Granted, I do drive a POS car (my pathetic old toyota, currently painted purple with lavendar hibiscus flowers on the hood and trunk). I looked down at my clothes and tried to determine if I looked like I had been cleaning offices. Although I was in my standard jeans+t-shirt, they looked clean to me. Whatever. I am no stranger to weirdness and I try to remember that this would be a good thing to post in my lj (but being blonde, I am completely unable to hold that thought.)
So yesterday, I am really late to meet my training partner at the gym and am already in my car when the same woman comes calling out to me and running up to my car. I open the driver's door to find out what the deal is and she apologizes for flagging me down last time and explains that she is really just looking for someone to clean her office. "yeah, uh huh, no problem, really" I mumble in a distracted way. Then she looks me dead in the eye and asks, "You really don't clean offices?"
What keeps my mind running in circles about this whole exchange is the weird racial questions that I find myself mulling over. I am white. I am blonde. I have perfect teeth. I am living in a middle-class, racially mixed but mostly hispanic neighborhood in a city in which it is very common to have an hispanic person as a nanny, housekeeper or gardner. The woman chasing after me is black. She has 3 broken teeth. Her clothes are not expensive. Of all the people to figure for someone who cleans offices, why would she pick me? I should probably make clear here that at no time was I offended that she asked me if I clean offices for a living, just surprised. 'Cause if I was standing on that same street with a couple other women of different ethnicities standing next to me, I would not be the first person that I would ask that question of. I am seeing a level of racial profiling in myself that lurks beneath the surface. I don't think it makes me racist, but it is making me a little uncomfortable in my head.
Across the street from my house is a strip mall with a couple of run down businesses. One of them is a "learning center" that does some amount of after-school tutoring. All of their clients park in front of my door depriving me of reasonable parking. When this happens, I park in their parking lot. They have never complained to me about this. I don't know if they realize how miserable I could make their lives if I start complaining to the city or they just don't care. I suspect they don't care. No matter. A couple of weeks ago, I had parked in their lot over night and was doing my usual late-for-work hurried stumble to the car when this woman came up to me and asked if I clean offices. Say what? So she asks me again if I clean offices. Uh, no, sorry, I park here because I live across the street. Smile and nod and drive away. That was weird. Granted, I do drive a POS car (my pathetic old toyota, currently painted purple with lavendar hibiscus flowers on the hood and trunk). I looked down at my clothes and tried to determine if I looked like I had been cleaning offices. Although I was in my standard jeans+t-shirt, they looked clean to me. Whatever. I am no stranger to weirdness and I try to remember that this would be a good thing to post in my lj (but being blonde, I am completely unable to hold that thought.)
So yesterday, I am really late to meet my training partner at the gym and am already in my car when the same woman comes calling out to me and running up to my car. I open the driver's door to find out what the deal is and she apologizes for flagging me down last time and explains that she is really just looking for someone to clean her office. "yeah, uh huh, no problem, really" I mumble in a distracted way. Then she looks me dead in the eye and asks, "You really don't clean offices?"
What keeps my mind running in circles about this whole exchange is the weird racial questions that I find myself mulling over. I am white. I am blonde. I have perfect teeth. I am living in a middle-class, racially mixed but mostly hispanic neighborhood in a city in which it is very common to have an hispanic person as a nanny, housekeeper or gardner. The woman chasing after me is black. She has 3 broken teeth. Her clothes are not expensive. Of all the people to figure for someone who cleans offices, why would she pick me? I should probably make clear here that at no time was I offended that she asked me if I clean offices for a living, just surprised. 'Cause if I was standing on that same street with a couple other women of different ethnicities standing next to me, I would not be the first person that I would ask that question of. I am seeing a level of racial profiling in myself that lurks beneath the surface. I don't think it makes me racist, but it is making me a little uncomfortable in my head.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-28 06:12 pm (UTC)Haha, if I were you, I'd be like "No. For the hundredth time, I *don't* clean offices. I work with computers and I have a law degree. If you'd like, I can show you my diploma. So, please don't ask me to clean anything again". I can't imagine how anybody would seem to think that you clean offices though.
Question about your cousin, his mother wouldn't happen to be Asian, would she? I've only found that Asian mothers tend to listen in on stuff. But it's kinda cool that he's getting around it and talking to you while bypassing her. I wish I had something like that when I was growing up. Like maintaining a channel of normalcy in the adolescent life.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-29 10:07 am (UTC)My aunt is pretty damn white. In fact, she is about as white as you can get--always lived in white areas, does a pretty good job of covering up her racism, has the "I'm white you owe me something" attitude going on. She was going in and reading/deleting his email so I hooked him up with an email address on my personal domain and told him how to keep it private from her. And he tries to chat with me from the school library so there is no chat trail on the home computer and his mom can't ground him for it. You're right tho--it's really hard to grow up without that outside perspective.