I’m cooking breakfast this morning and thinking about FINALLY stopping by Meals-on-Wheels to pick up an application for delivering meals. I’ve been wanting to get involved with the community more and the two aspects I’m most interested in are helping senior citizens and volunteering with Hospice (I am interested in training to be a death doula, but don’t think I can afford such training right now). However, each of these opportunities require me to go to the houses of strangers. Not something I’d typically think much about except for the fact that Vermont is quite rural and totally white (like, 96% or something bananas).

Now, I haven’t had any run-ins with race-related hatred. I had the one guy tell me when I was running to go back to the woods, but I don’t know if that was a race jab or just some incoherent bullshit. And I’ve been in groups (my running group, specifically) where one woman in particular acted a bit weird toward me. But that could be for any number of reasons–—my facial piercings, my loud clothing, the fact that I’m a stranger. (I keep moving to towns where people have known each other for 20 and 30 years. I find it’s hard to break into those kinds of groups.) But when I brought up to a friend of mine (who has also lived in the area for 30 years but embraces new people and new experiences with open arms…we became immediate friends at our tap dancing class) that I was concerned about how a hospice client in rural Vermont may react to a brown person knocking on their door, she seemed to think it was a legitimate thought to consider. None of, Oh, that wouldn’t happen. Or Don’t worry about such things. Instead we moved into a conversation about how our town representative (a black woman) resigned because of threats she and her family were receiving.

And so, I don’t know how seriously to weigh these concerns. Just yesterday, on Vermont Public Radio, I caught a bit of a story about how Vermont has a high rate of African-American men incarcerated—a much higher rate than there are African-Americans in the state of Vermont, and how is it possible to read that as anything more than racist policies? They mentioned a SNL skit that made me laugh out loud. It talks about Vermont being mentioned as a place for a white person utopia (‘The leaves change color but the people never do.).

So the perception is not mine alone. And the reality has been much harder on others than on myself. But I wonder if it will get worse if I start inserting myself more visibly into the community? Or will it just prove that stereotypes go in every direction—that I’m doing to others the same thing that I wonder is being done to me.