To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow. ~William Faulkner

I’ve been very sad to hear about the intolerance that’s been going on in the states lately. Last week, I wrote about how being black in Venezuela has worked to my advantage in terms of crime. While there was a bit of humor to the topic, I don’t think that anyone being mistreated because of their race or ethnicity is a laughing matter.

Many of the expats here in Caracas have been asking me what the he** is going on over in the US. Why are Americans all of a sudden becoming even more intolerant? I’m not going to pretend to know the exact reason the US is seeing a surge in people being a lot more vocal about their racism. What I do know is that they’ve been given a huge stage to put on a show. And who’s providing this stage…the American media.

My theory is that there were always racist and intolerant Americans. However, there was a time (post Civil Rights Movement) when it became taboo to openly express their views on people who are different, so you almost forgot they existed. The only places they ventured to spout racial epithets were their own homes or places where like-minded people congregated. On a national level, we tried to uplift our conversations and reverting to the use of racial slurs was considered politically incorrect.

Somehow, around the time we elected the first mixed-race president, the standards shifted. So now it’s common place for media outlets to give a lot of airtime to the minority of Americans harboring a lot of hate for immigrants, homosexuals, blacks, Muslims, etc. Unfortunately, some of us have become desensitized quickly to hearing such ignorance and anger in the mainstream media. Next thing you know, we’ll be seeing television series with similar themes disguised as comedy.

I hope that before we erode any more of the progress that has been made in the last 40+ years, we’ll start to self-police and expect more from each other, as well as journalists. In the interim, I will continue to teach my children that race is irrelevant and harboring hate will destroy their souls.

N.B. The title of this post is a quote from an unknown author.

It’s no secret that Caracas has a high crime rate. The American media has done a good job lately describing how terrible crime has gotten since a certain someone has been president (I wonder who that could be )

Obviously, people are always asking me about the crime situation. My answer is that I have yet to be affected. I know that I live in a large city and crime happens. You take the normal precautions (avoid certain areas at night, jewelry to a minimum, etc.) and you go about your daily life. Just like I didn’t hang out in Liberty City or Overtown where drive by shootings are common while I lived in South Florida, I am not a neighborhood regular in Catia and Petare here in Caracas.

This is a topic that many expats have turned into the proverbial dead horse. The last time I spoke about this was with a friend from Austria and then it dawned on me – this blonde hair, blue-eyed European can really stick out when walking the streets in Caracas. Little old brown-skinned me, not so much. Aside from the regular cat calls of “morena” or “negrita”, I have yet to even feel someone giving me a funny look.

In the beginning when I would go pick up the kids from school, other parents assumed I was a nanny until they saw me with two little carbon copies of myself. Sometimes when I’m walking back into the building from dropping them off in the morning, I get looks of kindred spirits from housekeepers arriving for a day’s work. If some poor soul asks me for directions and they pick up that I’m a foreigner, it’s assumed that I’m a student. My husband is often asked by the guys he plays soccer with the name of the restaurant at which he works.

When they see me, they don’t see dollar signs – they see a service sector worker or a student, at best. There’d be no point in kidnapping me because my family is probably too poor to pay any ransom. As advised, I don’t wear gold jewelry so even mugging me would be a waste of time. I know this rationale probably sounds ludicrous, but they’re all the types of crimes that you hear happen very frequently in Caracas.

Hence, I feel pretty safe here because I’m black. Who woulda thunk it?!