Trying To Include

IN THE SMALL TOWN in the American south where heroically but barely I endure a pervasive and saysintellectual wasteland, there lives an African-american family, including a seventy year old gentleman, which appears to be the only black folk in town. The gentleman, only a few years alder than I< I have befriended. He does a lot of walking, and i see him often, and I greet him. I couldn't tell whether he knew anything about George Floyd, or cares, so I asked him. He said he does, but his apparent lack of specific knowledge made me wonder.Like myself, he remembers the nearly complete lack of white support for MLK walked the streets, and says he has noticed teh abundance of it now, and thinks the difference is significant, like I do. If I were to invite him to attend with me one of the numerous protests I have attended, I suspect he would decline the invitation. He tacitly accepted but actually declined the many invitations I gave him to have lunch with me at the senior center; one can scarcely blame him; during the five years I've been going he is teh only African-American I have seen within fifty feet of the front door, save for a lady who visited briefly on government business. this is, after all, a small southern town, where racism is cleverly concealed behind a veneer of voluntary segregation. I wish he would read the 1940 novel by Richard Wright "native son", a gripping description of black culture in pre WWII Chicago. I might mention it to him, though i doubt he would; his reading skills and interest I vaguely suspect. In fact I wish everyone in America and at least one person in my town would read it, other then me. The only intellectual friends I have here are in their nineties, and recently moved into an assisted living facility. James Baldwin, Lebron James, Colin Kaepernick have garnered renewed attention lately. I hope Richared Wright soon does. He might.But if he does, odds are it won't happen in my small town in the deep American south,where whatever racism there might be exists only in cleverly concealed voluntary segregation and conservative christian piety.