Wythville, VA->Silver Point, TN-> Coldwater, MS-> Hattiesburg, MS

The land I covered over the past week was originally occupied by the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Chakchiuma. This morning, I write with a backdrop of lovely new bird songs on the edge of Geiger Lake in Hattiesburg, MS. I am not a birder–so, this is similar to turning on the radio and hearing songs without reference to the artists. The winged musicians that awaken me this AM put on a good show. They don’t know me and I too am a stranger to them. This dynamic symbolizes my travels. I wander to new lands, crossing paths with alien people and cultures. Sometimes the music lands and other times, I would rather move the dial. I have covered 1600 miles thus far–and, at times, it feels as though the radio dial has been spinning continuously. Crystal clear harmony is often interrupted by static. Heading toward the Gulf of Mexico, the station seems to become clearer–the clarity seems dependent on the people, the culture, my headspace, and how these forces play off one another. The thick southern accents and changing demographics as I go South is new to me. The area I am in now is a majority African American. I hear that covert and overt racism runs deep in the South–I of course know this is true, but I also know that being immersed in Whiteness, as we are in the Northeast, is quite insidious. Liberals love to take shots at Conservatives (or “Trumpers” ) while they live in their White bubbles pretending to be morally pure. I am trying to practice avoidance of “contempt prior to investigation” as I travel, so I can learn from my experiences rather than tribal opinions. I often wonder about liberals’ prejudices (I say this to include myself) as we so often choose to live only among each other, blind to outside opinions, including people of color. The latter, ‘people of color’, is by the way, a White liberal construct. As is the term “Latin X”. White people setting the standard for what is a morally pure and just way to speak seems fraught with hypocrisy to me, but I digress. So, as I trudge into new lands with new cultures and new people, I want to keep my ears attuned to the station, making my own determinations, questioning my own biases, and learning from both the static and the harmony.