i am in little rock this week with my whole family for my brother's wedding. yea!
i grew up here and every time i come to visit, i get a wash of nostalgia ~ i love to go see my old house, my old school, i try to see old friends, etc... today on the plane, i was remembering all the nice things i remembered about this town ~ there are some ;). i told my mom something like, "maybe someday i will come here, buy a house, work at childrens hospital here, blah blah blah." we got to the hotel, went to lunch and on the walk back to the hotel passed a shoe shine station on the street. for the first time ever, i consciously observed this very obvious portrait of race/class relations in this city. the shoe shiner was a black man who looked very much like i remember most older black men looking in downtown little rock ~ kinda disheveled, older clothes, etc. the man getting his shoes shined was an upper class white man sitting there in his work clothes. i couldnt help but notice his burberry plaid socks. something about this visual made me pay attention to what was going on ... the shoe shiner was sitting on his little stool shining the other man's shoes, talking to him (not sure about what). and the man who was having his shoes shined sat upon his throne, holding his newspaper up, as if hiding behind it meant that he didnt have to acknowledge the other man sitting in front of him, and completely ignored anything the other man was saying. i was floored. this is probably the kind of scene i "saw" countless times when i lived here and never noticed. time and being in denver and education, i think, have made me more aware. as we walked away, my mom said (as i was thinking similarly), "your job is to shine my shoes, boy." WOW. it is so interesting to me that this town was the center of a huge race issue ~ a POSITIVE one, not so long ago (Central High integration, the Central 9, etc etc etc) and yet a white man cant bring himself to acknowledge the other human being that he might be giving a few bucks to shine his shoes. how sad! i won't be moving here anytime soon...
(i plan on doing some photography while i am here, if i can find some time. i hope to capture the dichotomous nature of this place, among other things. if i get some good shots, i plan on posting them here.)
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Having not lived in Little Rock, I may be ignorant here, but this seems more like a sign of the times to me. How many people do I see every day, walking 2 by 2 with headphones in their ears. How many teenagers sit side by side with their parents and act like they don't exist. How many parents walk side be side with their kids talking on cell phones. How many 'neighbors' never say a word to each other. I can walk outside to get the mail and my neighbor will be outside and he won't even look me in the eye. I suppose in some areas it may be because of race or class, but I think that, for the most part, this kind of behavior is a universal disease.
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