Just not where you might think…

One of my friends at work is black. He’s from a small town here in Carolina, great guy, and is an engineer who travels for us doing system integration/installations. I was talking to him the other day, and he told me that he was in the upper part of Maine with another one of our engineers a few months ago, and they were out driving around, seeing the sights. They stopped somewhere to talk to one of the locals, a ~65 year old man, to ask about the area. During the conversation the other engineer asked, “Is there some place around here we can get a good lunch”? The guy answered, in that Maine drawl, “Ayup, but not for him”, pointing at my friend. Unbelievable.

He went on to say that while he hears people bash the south for being racist; he encounters more of it in other parts of the country than he has here. He was in the Air Force and has traveled a good bit with them and with us, so he’s got something to base that on. That’s been my observation as well. It’s a perception that’s perpetuated by the media and by other areas of the country that are unable, or unwilling, to see what’s in their own back yard.