The Gap Between Me and My Black Neighbors Upstairs

So we're settling into living in this blasted hot state of Texas.

It ain't central Nebraska, y'all.

As I find us five surrounded by different colors, cultures, and habits, I am realizing how much more comfortable I am with people who aren't just. Like. Me. I have never been destined for white suburbia, never longed for an upper-class gated community. I like looking around and seeing different, watching how my neighbors live, how they interact as a family.

I grew up with four younger brothers who are not white. I saw racism as we grew up in white Missouri.

We were different.

Yet there is this gap.

And I read Deidra's thoughts and I think she is inspring me to be more brave about this issue. Though sometimes I don't feel I have the right, being white middle-class, to talk about race and how I often feel disconnected from black women, that I feel this sense of apology rising up in me before we even start a conversation, that I'm sorry for what's happened in Ferguson and for what other white people have said or done or how they've acted.

But how do I cross that barrier? How do I bridge that gap between the Indian family who waits at the bus stop with me and my own kids? How do I teach them, in the words of our 6-year old before we left the midwest, that God isn't "white or American"?

I would love some honest discussion on this.

I just don't know where to start.

And by the way, this house is way too quiet since school has started.

That's not a complaint, but a miracle.