this is a fantastic and insightful post. if i may ask you for a follow up...what can i do as generic white dude to make you feel more comfortable as a member of society, and not feel white people side-eye all the time?
i hate that things are this way, but i learned a long time ago about code switching. i've told this story before, but i used to work summers out in east texas. i grew up fairly comfortably in a dallas suburb that was majority white, but had some minorities, mostly of indian and pakistani heritage. very few black folks.
anyways, going to town in gladewater was the first time i really noticed the "across the train tracks" kind of segregation. i must've been 20 or so when i went into town for a haircut. the barber on the highway was the main advertised barber in town, so i went there, but there was a long wait, so i figured i'd drive around and see if i couldn't find another. so i crossed the tracks and drove a few blocks, and saw a barber pole on a pretty ramshackle building. i figured, what the hell? so i went in.
man, i guess i had known the idea of a black barbershop, but i had just walked into a real deal black barbershop. i could hear laughter and boisterous voices before i opened that door, but when the whitest white boy in town opened that door, it got silent. the kind of silent you can hear. there was one barber chair in the room, and there was a guy in it. there was another guy waiting. everyone stopped talking and the barber did his best "the fuck are you doing here white boy" look, and said, "um, can i help you?" i looked around and simply said "yall cut hair here right?" and my goodness, the man's laughter was infectious. i don't know what they expected out of me, but that seemed to undo the tension. he shook the tarp they put on you off the guy in the chair, and shooed the guy there out, and motioned for me to sit. i said, "no, i'll wait,' and pointed to the guy sat in the waiting area, and they all laughed. "no, son, these men are here all the time, this one don't need a cut, and he's just here."
so he put me in the chair and started talking to me about what it was i wanted. it was one of those old school haircut and a shave with a straight razor kind of places. it was awesome, but everyone was super polite and kind of quiet.
anyways, when i went back the second time was when i felt that i was actually welcome. the record didn't scratch when i walked in, and they started talking more comfortably around me. to the point that i couldn't understand half of what they were saying for awhile, until i got used to it. and the funny stories and ribbing came back, and i didn't feel like they were walking on eggshells like the first time, and they even started giving me shit.
anyways, that led to my first black church experience, because the barber was a pastor at a church in town. that's another story, but for a whitebread suburb boy, it was all quite a cultural awakening.
tl;dr, anyways, that was the first time i realized that black people talk differently around black people than they do around white people. it was a truly eye-opening experience.