2011...are you sure?

I wrote this on Good Friday, but am just posting it b/c I have a much better understanding of how to utilize blogspot.com.  How grateful I am to of had this outlet when I got home that night.

Parked alongside the curb across from a blue, beautifully built and garnished home on Hogue St. in Old Fourth Ward, a community in the midst of gentrification, I sat in my beat up green 1997 toyota corolla, listening to my sister, a real estate agent, inquire on the details of the house with the selling agent via her blackberry. Three cars come down the two-way street squeezing between my car and a large pick-up truck parked in front of the home that has been on the market since 2009; one of those cars was an Atlanta police patrol car.  The agent goes on and on supplying my sister with the great details of the home: 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, a legal apt w/tenants paying $1100 already.  Price: $474k. Somewhere in the background I hear a man yelling.  The house we're in front of has a blonde, blue-eyed little girl on the steps, a blonde curly-headed man standing near the girl who seems to be visiting, and the presumable homeowner who was leaning on the porch looking like a proud homeowner. I learned of his heavy southern accent when I realized that the yelling I was hearing earlier was coming from his vocal cords.  He was verbally accosting us: two women in a car with the windows rolled up.  He said that every time people are in front of his truck it gets broken into…WHAT???!!! Dropping the f-bomb like we were all men at a bar, too drunk and stupid to have a civilized conversation, my sister tried to explain why we were there and remind him that he was really cursing like a sailor in front of his daughter; the other man stood on the steps just observing. No explanation calmed him or helped him to understand that apologizing to us was the only acceptable next step. The rage that came up in me as I realized he was either sexist or racist, made me wonder how in the world civil rights leaders, especially those that used non-violent means, bore racism and ignorance.  It made me wonder how women in history dealt with overt discrimination for the mere fact that God made them with coke bottle curves, birthing canals to multiply the earth, and the ability to put themselves on the back burner for their family—and often their community.  How dare he spew his adult hatred to us to feed his ego! It took everything in me not to retaliate.  How better of a human being would that have made me? So I prayed with my sister that we not think  vengeful thoughts and we be filled with the spirit of forgiveness…and that his daughter not inherit such ways. And we wonder how hatred is bred repeatedly…