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DARE TO ASK: Personal space, race: Touchy topic

By PHILLIP MILANO

Question

Most people accept being bumped into as part of living in a busy metropolis. But every time I bump into a black person, they get extremely upset and start yelling. What’s up with this?

Mark, 49, white, New York

Replies

Blacks have a greater sense of personal space and take it as an aggressive act to bump into someone and then not apologize.

G., 43, black male, Phoenix

It may be the way people treat some blacks: as if our feelings don’t matter, or as if a little annoyance here and there isn’t a big thing.

Christine, black, Hartford, Conn.

Many blacks know whites are basically afraid of them. They like to intimidate you and probably would back off if you became aggressive.

Sam, white, Fort Myers

Black folks have so many issues with white folks that the last thing they want is some white dude bumping into them who doesn’t have the manners to apologize.

Bella, 33, Afro-Caribbean, Washington, D.C.

A large number of blacks, especially well-off blacks in big cities, view themselves as “victims of racism,” so every accidental bump is elevated from “whoops” to “racist assault.”

Ann, 38, white, Kansas City, Mo.

Expert says

“Bumping” and “shoving” in the Big Apple? How quaint. Try facing down a Hummer for a parking spot at the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Fleming Island. Or knowing with a heavy heart you’ll need to clothesline an 11-year-old to get positioning for the last iPod nano allocated to your Circuit City.

If we must talk about these folks caroming off each other up there, we might as well do it with Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, an African- American known to comment on race and culture in America in a Pulitzer Prize-winning sort of way.

Using race as the chief variable for who gets miffed when jostled is dubious, Pitts argues, because it’s just one characteristic – albeit the most visible – among many that differentiate people, including class, education and upbringing.

Yet there may be something to that some dub the “black tax” – an extra burden African- Americans shoulder just for being black, piled onto all the usual worries like kids, high gas prices, a jerk boss, etc.

“It demands an extra pound of flesh . . . so there can be an undercurrent of anger in some African-Americans, where they expect the worst until shown differently.”

But other minorities have obstacles, too, no?

“Let’s just say my forebears came here to oppression, whereas other minorities came here to escape it.

“We [blacks] are trying to make a life among those who oppressed us. It’s like going through a bitter divorce but still being in the same bed.”

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