Description: America Through British Eyes
TL;DR “Fellow white people: sit down, shut up, and open your eyes and ears to what’s happening around you.”
I first arrived in the USA in 1985, a naïve grad student who thought years of watching TV shows like Hill Street Blues and Dallas had given me a decent background on what life would be like here.
My first “things are not what you think” came only a few days later. A friend’s parents invited me to a backyard barbecue—twenty or so well-meaning, educated, middle-aged and solidly middle-class white people. They were delightful; until someone made a comment about race. This was only a few months after the Philadelphia police department had dropped a literal bomb on the roof of a building housing black anti-government activists, and periodic protests had continued through the summer months.