“What do you do for a living?”
Not exactly a trick question. Still, I stood there speechless. The clerk at the Verizon store looked up from his computer screen and stared at me with a puzzled expression. When he asked me the question, he probably didn’t even really care about the answer. He was just trying to be friendly while I waited for him to activate my new phone. But since there was a delay in my response, now he was curious.
“I…uh…have a couple of properties I look after.”
He kept staring at me, his brow furrowed. I stammered around some more.
“I mean, I have some rental properties that I take care of.”
“Okay,” he said, looking back at his computer screen and giving a little shrug, as if to say, “Was it really that hard of a question?”
On Thursday, July 29, 2010, the Austin city council took a vote that was a pivot point for race relations in Austin, Texas. Statistics show what folks know by talking to each other - Black people are leaving Austin quickly and moving to other cities. Many point out that it is because of the feeling that people of color don't belong and are not accepted by the majority. Housing in Austin continues to be almost 100% racially segregated. Social life is segregated by skin color with a few notable exceptions.
Some say the most disturbing difference is the way that police treat people of color compared to the way they treat folks West of the racial dividing line of IH-35.
