My Grandmother’s Detroit Neighborhood Taught Me About Blacks

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This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists.

I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. When I would walk down the street and there was a group of kids approaching me, I didn’t think anything of it — and nothing happened. At the very worst, a bully might yell “Nerd!” every now and then. My grandmother still lived in Detroit (where my mom grew up and where it was all white at the time). Needless to say, my grandmother’s Detroit neighborhood was almost exclusively black by the time I was born. When my mother took me to visit my grandmother, we normally stayed inside her house, but on a couple of occasions we ventured out.

One time I walked with my mom to get ice cream (I’m not sure why we walked instead of driving). We saw a small group of black kids approaching in the distance, and I immediately felt fear. I was completely unbiased. I knew nothing about black people and, like I said, I was just a young kid. My mom was scared too. At first, we kept walking. Then we noticed that the blacks had picked up speed and started crossing the street to our side. At that point, we turned around and ran back to my grandmother’s house without looking back.

There were many other incidents involving blacks that happened to me as a kid. One notable instance was the time I was in an arcade, and a black kid kept shouting, “Gimme dollar! Gimme dollar!” He kept walking away and coming back to where I was in the arcade and repeating his demand. Then, when I went to a token machine and put in a $1 bill, the black kid swooped in and grabbed the tokens from the machine before I could. I was too scared to confront him.

So, throughout my childhood, whenever I was told that black people are equal or — even more ridiculously — that they’re marginalized and treated unfairly and that we’re responsible for it, I always took those words with a grain of salt. As an adult, my suspicions have only been reinforced. I’ve had things stolen by blacks, I’ve been threatened, and twice I was chased. Also, my parents’ house was burglarized by black men. 

And the news has now become simply dreadful. I have even come up with a phrase describing it: “Eliza Rush.” As you may remember, Eliza Fletcher was a white school teacher in Memphis who was raped and murdered by a black man. A white female cop in Connecticut was viciously attacked with a hammer by a rabid pit bull of a black man and is now fighting for her life. In California, a black guy attempted to kill a policewoman with her own gun. When it jammed, he brutally pummeled her. In all of these cases, the assailants charged at their victims at the first sight of them, with great speed, full of rage, probably foaming at the mouth. They “Eliza rushed” the women.

Nothing will ever convince me there are no differences in race.

If you have a story about how you became racially aware, or about your firsthand experience with race, we’d like to hear it. If it is well written and compelling, we will publish it. Please feel free to use a pen name and send it to us here.