>Whether it is at a lunch counter at a 1959 diner or in a Waffle House booth, we are forever trespassers in the spaces they have colonized and made their own.
>It has always been their space. It is their Waffle House. Their Starbucks. Their park. Their dormitory. Their street. Their neighborhood. Their America. It all belongs to them.
>Now I understand: It is just what white people do.
>White people have always been this way. The only difference between now and a decade ago is our awareness of this phenomenon and the decline in black people’s willingness to subject ourselves to the whim of colonizers.
>There is something to be said about the big black animal that makes them uncomfortable. How they want to make it disappear from sight because it annoys them. How the huge black dog seems terrifying, but it is actually the white ones that bite. How I actually considered walking in the other direction, down and back up a steep hill, just to appease them. But those analogies seem pointless when compared with reality.
>I am sure there will be some who will skim over this and point out that they are white but do not subscribe to this way of thinking. They will probably ask that I not paint all Caucasians with such a broad brush. But instead of reissuing the disclaimer of “not all white people” and wondering why they came onto a black site to colonize this discussion with their declarations of butt-hurtedness, I will simply say:
