Oh no, I haven’t forgotten about Black History Month. I’ve just had several other things occupying my time and writing fulfillments recently, and to be honest, I haven’t been agitated recently to where I’d want to verbally retaliate. Until yesterday. It’s bad enough that yesterday was my last day at my previous assignment, that I had to turn down work because it was going to cockblock my chances to get in with a company I really want to get with, but on my way home from work, there were about three emergency vehicles that necessitated pulling off to the side of the road and yield to them. Each time I courteously moved aside for an ambulance or fire truck, I would have to wait a little bit longer than necessary to get back on track, because each time, there were at least four vehicles, driven by you-know-whats, that were essentially tailgating emergency vehicles, thus preventing me from getting back onto the road without waiting for their aggressive, me-first driving behavior to pass first.
So, now that I’m all agitated and shit again, I have to ask:
Why do black people always have to walk in the middle of the street?
In some cases, the answer is simple: There are no sidewalks. However, in cases like my own neighborhood, there are plenty of sidewalks, none of which are decimated by roots, graffiti, or poor construction; they’re perfectly adequate, fine-conditioned sidewalks, meant for people to walk on. But people simply choose to not use them for this purpose, and I do not know why. And it’s not like they’re walking along the shoulders of the streets, which would be marginally more acceptable, but the fact that they’re smack-dab in the middle of the street, and typically in numbers, walking side-by-side in order to take up as much lateral space as possible.
And I don’t know why and would like to know why.
The worst part about this behavior is that it’s very much acted upon in a defiant manner. African-Americans will act like it’s their god-given right to walk in the middle of the driving paths, and act in defiance and inconvenience when the rightful vehicles that are supposed to be on there force them aside. I’ll be driving through my own neighborhood and there will be like 3-4 fat chicks hogging up the entire width of the road, and I’ll pull up to them, and they’ll pretend like they’re ignoring me until they simply can’t, and then defiantly move out of the way, staring at me like I just ran over their pitbull, like I was inconveniencing them. I’ll be in the parking lot at Publix trying to find a parking space, and I’ll see some rockstar parking I want to get, but Karl Malone’s mama is executing a perfect pick-and-roll in the middle of the drivable space, to where I can’t get around her and she won’t get out of the way, allowing someone else to swoop in and take the spot. And when I honk at her and mouth obscenities, she stares at me like I’m the one in the wrong, that the middle of the fucking road is the only place she can feasibly walk. And the examples are essentially endless.
The racially-insensitive hypothesis goes back to times in which there were no sidewalks. In fact, there weren’t even asphalt roads either. Thinking back to the times of Huck Finn and Kunta Kinte, it was probably a scenario where black people were forced to be out in open plain sight, so that the massas and owners could always keep an eye out on them. Clearly, them being in concealment and in areas where they could camouflage, especially in night-time hours was a bad thing, because they’re all thought to be crooks and up to no good. So, it was probably a case of them encouraged and forced to be walking around in the middle of the streets, so that everyone knew they were obedient and not up to no good, and so that they could be monitored at all times.
Such behavior is then evolutionarily passed down throughout those times, to where today, African-Americans unconsciously are ingrained with the behavior that it’s okay to walk in the middle of the streets, because clearly, a visible person isn’t nearly as sketchy and dangerous as someone who isn’t. Unfortunately for the passing of the times, walking out in the middle of the streets is a monumental, gigantic pain in the ass for motorists and street vehicles today.
