The A word

Area-ism

The word may sound strange, but it is something that does happen in Louisville, Ky. A few semesters ago, a professor mentioned this word. In Louisville, where you live is extremely important on how people view you as a person. Louisville is seen as a city that is divided by location. Once you mentioned where you grew up, people would automatically have preconceived notions about you.

City: Westend, Old Louisville, ect

County: Southend, Eastend

In the black community, this is even more important. Because of the great strides in Civil Rights movement, in the 70’s, black people were able to move out of the poor areas of the city and into the middle class suburbs of Louisville. My parents were one of these people.

Because I grew up around many white people, I saw race relations differently than many blacks in the city. I had both white and black friends. This was the case for many black people in the Eastend. Like many black people in the Eastend, they had a different upbringing than the blacks in the city. You see, before this, black people had a shared lifestyle and so everyone had pretty much the same upbringing and wealth range. My parents didn’t want me to talk in slang, and I had to talk like I had some sense. When I went to one of the local schools, there were two types of black people in the schools in the Eastend; the ones that lived in the Eastend and the ones that were bused in from the city. They didn’t always get along. Eastend people were seen as sell outs, and snotty. City folk were seen as Ghetto and loud. None of them were exactly true, but there was something there…

One guy from my African American studies classes stated, “There is a difference between the two.” And, it’s true, black people don’t like to state it, but it’s true.

Whenever I would mention where I lived to somebody that lived in the city, they would respond in a strange way.

“Where do you live?”

James answered, “Out there near Westport.”

“Oh, you live out there with the white people.”

And, does that make me less black?