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Quixote, this is your chance to say I told you so.
All right, I was overly optimistic about how well I would fit into and enjoy Omaha. I am actually somewhat embarrassed to see how blithe I was in my "going to move" thread... I really overestimated my own worldliness and familiarity with conservative culture. I was wrong! There, I said it. I'm not hating it here, not at all. There is still so much I haven't seen of the city. I've been really tight on cash since I got here and not doing much besides work and family dinners with the inlaws. So I am far from making a final judgement on my new home. I will say Jack Fear's description of the lay of the land was almost photographically accurate. Quixote's description of the human landscape equally so.
I've had to take a temp job at an office shuffling paperwork and whatnot. Out of a natural human need for social contact I've tentatively connected with the group of women I work alongside. At work lunches they regularly make racist, homophobic, politically acerbic, and just generally close-minded comments that curl my hair... so casually, like you'd talk about what your sandwich tastes like. It happens just about every lunch hour and I can do nothing but freeze in total shock. I don't say anything because I'm so afraid of being exposed as a fraud... I've already seen what they can do when they openly shun one member of the work group, and it's pure hell. Needless to say this is not a good work environment and I'll be moving on when my contract is up.
The city as a whole is quite racially segregated, with constant white flight to the west and black and Latino populations staying east of the vertical meridian that is considered the borderline between "west" and the rest. I live on the east side, and when I give people my address (where do you live being common small talk) they almost always remark on how "dangerous" my neighborhood is, also referred to as "the hood" and the "shooting gallery," even though half the houses on my street are occupied by one extended family (my landlords) and my next door neighbor is a nice old guy who brings in my garbage cans for me.
Interracial adoption is fairly commonplace among the white Christian population, but these adoptions seem to be exoticized in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable. It's one of those things that you can't prove, but you feel you know it when you see it... that certain way people have of saying "oh that baby is just SO beautiful!" One of my coworkers (white) fosters two black children and I have heard her friends make really off comments on their heritage and physical attributs - which with the foster mom simply chimes in. I mean, this is freaky stuff for me, I've just never heard anything like it before. My SO and I at one time were thinking seriously about interracial adoption, as there are so many non-white children in need and adoption rates are not as high for them, but now we're rethinking it big time. I don't know if we want to fight that fight - or drag a child into it.
I've talked about all this with my SO, and at the same time I try not to dwell on it all day every day. But it's a daunting place to settle into... with an eye to having children someday, especially. SO and I have agreed that we will give this a couple of years at least, as we help out with his elderly & ill parents here. But who knows if this will really last. On the one hand, I feel like this is a greater opportunity to make a difference and carve out a meaningful life than I ever would have had being just another Massachusetts hippie content in my ways. But on the other hand, god it's fucking depressing sometimes. |
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