{"id":297136,"date":"2017-03-01T23:18:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T22:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-deconstruction-of-whiteness-unsafe-among-my-own-kind\/"},"modified":"2017-03-01T23:18:03","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T22:18:03","slug":"a-deconstruction-of-whiteness-unsafe-among-my-own-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/a-deconstruction-of-whiteness-unsafe-among-my-own-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"A Deconstruction of Whiteness: Unsafe Among My Own Kind"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_90149\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-90149\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/01\/32550362725_547b739c47_z.jpg\" alt=\"Photo by ResistFromDay1 | CC BY 2.0\" width=\"510\" height=\"340\" srcset=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/01\/32550362725_547b739c47_z.jpg 510w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/01\/32550362725_547b739c47_z-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p align=\"right\">Photo by ResistFromDay1 | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In previous submissions to CounterPunch, I refer to our little Cafe\/coffee shop in Utica, New York\u00a0 as \u201ca safe place for human beings.\u201d\u00a0 I say this in almost no other context because the statement would be meaningless to most people, other than their assuming it means safe \u201cfor all human beings,\u201d as in all colors, ethnicities, religions, immigrant status, LGBTQ, etc., a refusal of Trump\u2019s xenophobic racist America.\u00a0 I assure you, it <em>does<\/em> mean that. \u00a0But I am referring to some other rarely met condition that allows me \u2013 and this may be just <em>me<\/em> \u2013\u00a0 to feel safe there, as I do in precious few other places.<\/p>\n<p>Living on an inner city street as we have for over a quarter century, among multiple ethnicities, mainly poor, some working and a few middle class people, I\u2019m clear my feeling of unsafety does not come from America\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cusual suspects.\u201d\u00a0 Though not always pleased as punch with my neighbors, I am not especially <em>afraid<\/em> among them.\u00a0 It is among \u201cmy own kind,\u201d that I feel unsafe, in particular when I am unsure of the unspoken underlying assumptions or of the understandings we supposedly share that others seem to take for granted.\u00a0\u00a0 Oddly, unwilling outsider that I am, I am most likely to feel safe, that is, <em>at home<\/em> \u2013 when in the presence of art making, especially jazz performances and poetry readings held from time to time in our small art space next door to the Cafe.\u00a0 I feel safe when my friend Gene&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/03\/01\/a-deconstruction-of-whiteness-unsafe-among-my-own-kind\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by ResistFromDay1 | CC BY 2.0 In previous submissions to CounterPunch, I refer to our little Cafe\/coffee shop in Utica, New York\u00a0 as \u201ca safe place for human beings.\u201d\u00a0 I say this in almost no other context because the statement would be meaningless to most people, other than their assuming it means safe \u201cfor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-297136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}