I've been in places where white people are very rare and I low-key enjoyed the attention. I find being ignored more disturbing. YMMV of course ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I remember driving across the US and stopping in Nevada at a gas station/cafe in the middle of nowhere. I walked in (white male) and got some very hard stares from the locals. Not comfortable at all.
Then I realized it wasn't because I was white (they were white too), it was probably the way I was dressed and the fact I didn't fit in. I was an outsider to them.
And, changing your personality to "fit in" is a lot harder than you might imagine.
Except this is America, where black people aren't very rare. And the attention the author is talking about, more often than not, is negative.
When you were out and about in these places with, were you afraid of being stopped by the police?
That depends where in America. There are plenty of place (some large cities - SF I'm looking at you) where black people are pretty rare. Or at least rare in the areas people frequent.
The funny part is I talk to the folks I know from the South and they have a TON more interactions with blacks than anyone from the Northeast or West Coast do.
I think it will be helpful here to specify what type of people you're talking about in the second sentence, otherwise you're implicitly excluding black people from the general term "people". I don't believe this was intentional, it just reads weird.
I called it out because the SF population is something like 10% black, but most are in black neighborhoods. People that don't live there rarely go to those neighborhoods.
(We had a lot of that kind of trouble in the 1960s, maybe you know, and the strong impression I formed growing up is that while the results aren't perfectly satisfactory to anyone, the compromises are sufficiently so to everyone, and nobody finds the state of things upsetting enough to want to go beyond within-the-system incrementalism.)
Beyond that, and not to get at you personally, but nobody where I'm from thinks about "[having] interactions with blacks". That's a chilly, sociological way of looking at things, and it's hard to be chilly and sociological about people with whom you've spent your life cheek by jowl. It's just not the natural frame of mind.
On the other hand, since moving away from home and to a city whose black population is twice the size of its white, I've discovered the remarkable experience of being hectored on the subject of racial harmony by white people who choose, for reasons on which it would be invidious of me to speculate, to live where there are almost no black people at all.
I've never known a black person from anywhere to assume that, because I'm from Mississippi, I must be racist. I've known plenty of white people from places like New York and California to do exactly that. I don't really know what conclusion, if any, to draw from this, but I sure do find it curious.
Like you said, I've heard that despite the reputation and history of the South, there is a lot more racial integration in day to day life than most parts of America.
And yes, it irks me to no end to hear whites from big coastal cities (who rarely ever interact with blacks) shit all over the South (most of them who have never been there).
As another comment said, though, the sides feel so strongly about that topic of race that bringing it up can have negative consequences in a big way for simplest opinion. They're more likely here to get irritated and dismiss you as an idiot than anything. Maybe shout counter-points at you. Both sides. You have to be in the black ghettos or deep, white, rural areas before it gets dangerous. Still more likely to intimidate you into leaving than hurt you but you take chances there.
Things only heated up recently with the BLM protests. They shut down the main Interstate and airport in Memphis recently. Pissed everyone off in a city with lots of white and black fans of 2nd Amendment. Anxiety & tension is high but no violence I think. A testament in itself, yeah? Hopefully the crap is over soon so race relations & traffic conditions go back to normal. Except I-240 where the speed is about the same. :)
"I've known plenty of white people from places like New York and California to do exactly that."
A lot of white racists think other people see the "obvious" that they see by default. Many were hesitant to say something until they had a few good times with me. Then, they'd drop it expecting me to nod or laugh. I'd just brush it off with a simple No or something instead of arguing with them. Pointless.
" I've discovered the remarkable experience of being hectored on the subject of racial harmony by white people who choose, for reasons on which it would be invidious of me to speculate, to live where there are almost no black people at all."
They trip me out, too. I get more confused the more they talk about "Black" perspectives as differences add up between their statements and those of Southern Blacks. Maybe I just haven't lived in as many hoods and mixed areas as them. Maybe. ;)
All of my black friends who moved into Seattle from the South complain about liberal racism. It'd be funny if it weren't depressing.
Map of races in SF: http://imgur.com/MwIcpSo
From http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/ (2010)
Somewhat, yes. Foreigners in said country are frequently stopped by the police so they can extort you for bribes.
> I've been in a few countries where Asians are rare (yes, rarer than in Iowa)
I think experiences of being a white american visiting a country where white people are rare are probably at least somewhat comparable to experiences of being an asian american visiting a country where asian people are rare?
It simply made him uncomfortable to be an outsider at whom people stared. Something for which I find it hard to fault the residents of Iowa or the other unnamed country.
Actually, in a lot of places they kind of are: a little over 12% of the population, very much concentrated in the Old South states and a relative handful of cities almost all east of the Mississippi. (Six percent of San Francisco's population as of the 2010 census, if you're wondering.)
If you assume your figure of 12%, that means 1 in 10 people identifies as black. I would not consider that "very rare."
As of 2015, there are ~20 million Asians in America. It would be weird for me to agree with the statement that asians are "very rare."
http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/p...
etc
Closer to 1 in 8, actually. But that's nationally -- the US is a big nation with lots of regional (both large- and small-scale) variation. Its under 7% for California (and SF is pretty close to the statewide ratio, though neighboring Oakland is close to 30%.)
Anecdotally, growing up, there were a half-dozen Hispanic kids (who were my cousins, as my great-uncle had married in Arizona when he was in the Army), one (adopted) black child, and one other (adopted) Indian child. That was the sum total of the ethnic diversity in the entire thousand-person school district in one backwards corner of Maine. We had to rib on the French-Canadians and fall back on home-town stereotypes... There were actually more Asians around, because the Boston Chinese food restaurant cartels/mafia expanded northward. I never met anyone who was Jewish until I went to college.
When I got to college in Chicago, though, I was surprised that for most of my fellow students' high schools, black people numbered in the single digits.
He was replying to an Asian American talking about his experiences outside America.
You might find it helpful to go back and read the grandparent first, then read the comment you're replying to again in its actual context.
It's because, as a white person raised in a white-supremacist society, experience has not conditioned me to see attention as dangerous.