I lived in Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, for a number of years, and while there were some things I loved about the place, there were others that I thought less than savory. One was that the city boasted about being a “city of neighborhoods”, where there were distinct divisions with distinct ethnic character — this place was Italian, that one is Dominican, that one over there is black, etc. The suburb where I lived was predominantly Ukrainian. Character is good, diversity is great, but I always felt like it was bragging about being segregated, and it also meant that some neighborhoods were terribly poor and dilapidated, next to others that were very tony and posh, and it was like there was a wall between them that you could not cross.
So I’m not surprised that when the wife of the lieutenant governor of the state (a Democrat) made a quick trip to the grocery store without a security escort, she was verbally assaulted and harassed.
*TRIGGER WARNING* I love love love this country but we are so deeply divided. I ran to the local grocery store and was met by and verbally assaulted by this woman who repeatedly told me I do not belong here. The confrontation continued into the parking lot where I was able to pic.twitter.com/kzSoxCVJ2x
— Gisele Barreto Fetterman (@giselefetterman) October 11, 2020
Not everyone in Pennsylvania is like that woman, but one of the things I most disliked about the place is that it enabled residents to be perfectly comfortable with all kinds of hatreds. Now our president is working hard to make the entire country comfortable with casual racism. That harasser showed no shame about using racist slurs, and that’s where we’re headed now.