After graduating from college, you obtain a job in a medium-sized city in the Midwest and rent an apartment in a house in a nearby town. A family with an African American father and a white mother has recently moved into a house down the street. You think nothing of it, but you begin to hear some of the neighbors expressing concern that the neighborhood "has begun to change." Then one night, a brick is thrown through the window of the new family's home, and around the brick is wrapped the message, "Go back to where you came from!" Since you're new to the neighborhood yourself, you don't want to make waves, but you are also shocked by this act of racial hatred. You can speak up somehow, or you can stay quiet. What do you decide to do? Why?

     This scenario assumes me a college graduate, which I will be, and living in the Midwest - also succinct with my provided identity. Therefore, I will allow myself the luxury of being a 56 year old gay man and former inmate with a robust inquisitive nature.

     I have seen Middle America be increasingly tolerant with reduced doses of xenophobia that typically are met with deep resistance by communities at large. Inmates of color corroborate this story. I would also examine the new occupants are their undesirable qualities the product of racism, class, or bearing? This would determine my approach. The former might not necessarily be the impetus in 2026. Given the larger numbers of Black and Brown Conservatives, the lesser-mentioned Black success stories proliferating the suburban topography throughout the country, and the population density of Blackness in popular culture the assumption of this being Klan-ish like the mid-20th century smacks of the ludicrous.

     If this was a pocket of racism, I'd isolate, confront, intimidate, and frighten the coward responsible into stasis or self-ejection OR sit them down and have a civilized discussion about personal evolution depending on which side of the bed I woke up on.

     This scenario feels like a comfort zone hearkening for those days like disenchanted White men of the early 1970s who yearned for the 1950s. They could have been having the time of their lives but they couldn't see the houses for the bricks.