A Good Neighborhood

by Therese Anne Fowler

We’ll say no one can be known by only what’s visible. We’ll say most of us hide what troubles and confuses us, displaying instead the facets we hope others will approve of, the parts we hope others will like.

Why couldn’t we see one another as simply human and pull together, for goodness’ sake? The planet was dying while people fought over things like who was most American—or who was American at all.

In her experience, some men—well-off white men in particular—were so accustomed to their authority and privilege that they perceived it as a right.

In size, Jackson-Evers is on the lesser end of small—though not tiny. The main thing to emphasize here is that the state of Mississippi’s largest airport bears the name of a black hero of the civil rights movement, while the state itself continues to fly a flag that has as a significant part of its design the entire flag of the Confederacy. This kind of dichotomy is the South in a nutshell.