Tim Elliott.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a close friend who was black. When I went to college was really the first time I lived around people of color. I grew up in a small town in western PA. I looked up the census numbers for when I was there and in the township where I lived there were 2521 people, all of whom were white, and in the town proper there were 6231 people with 12 blacks and 11 “other,” so I grew up very white. There were blacks in the town just down the river, and we referred to their part of town as “The Congo” (I know, right??). Even so, my parents tried to raise me right, but the word I think of when describing their attitude was “tolerance.” I guess it would have been hard for that word to be “welcoming” since there was nobody in the area to welcome, but “tolerance” seems negative in retrospect.
Fast forward to today. Most of my friends are cyclists, and while I ride with some blacks, I don’t really hang out with them after the ride. My next door neighbor is black, but while we’ve exchanged pleasantries, that’s pretty much it. I feel like if I tried to deepen friendships with any of these folks I might just be trying to check off the “I have a black friend” box, and I don’t want to be that guy.
