Harmful color reference in Felony Flats

A LONG–TIME resident was sharing with me a bit of our neighborhood’s unsavory, pre–development history.

The police, I learned, had once dubbed the area Felony Flats. Charming.

Some years ago, he told me, during housing construction that would vastly improve the neighborhood, a sex worker had commandeered a Porta–Potty for turning tricks. A senior citizen burst from her home, barefoot, glass of wine in hand, and chased the sex worker down the street, screaming, “Get your Black ass outta here!” He chuckled that the senior had managed not to spill a drop of her wine.

I winced. Choosing not to go into the empathy I have for a sex worker driven to that extreme, I said that I wish the senior had omitted “Black” in favor of, simply, “your ass.”

The man, who, I hardly need point out, is white, defended the word choice. He found it funny.

Not incidentally, he and his husband have faced their share of prejudice, intolerance, and hate. It saddens me when members of one marginalized community cannot summon empathy for members of another. Pitting the marginalized against one another is one way that a plurality maintains undue power.

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