Something happened this afternoon...

That really bothered me.

Myles called me a little while ago and said "I just got the strangest phone call." Mind you, one of our houses is up for rent, so he's been handling a lot of phone calls about it since it went into the the paper on Wednesday. A woman called him about it, and he said that she had made the best impression so far, was very eloquent and well-spoken, but then she asked him a question that made him completely stop in his tracks. She said "Now I have to tell youask you something before deciding if I come to look at the house. We're an African American family. Would this neighborhood be accepting of us?" WTF? They're new to Indiana from California, so when Myles told me this, my first thought was that coming to such a bass-akwards racist state such as this one, they might have heard things and are somewhat apprehensive. That was the only thing I could think up for her asking that question.

So Myles tells me that he felt really bad for her that she felt she even needed to ask that in the first place. After he tells me this, I just sit here, totally shocked, and then Myles calls me again. It was bothering him so much that he had to call her back and apologize for the fact that she had to ask that. (My Myles is a damn good guy. =P )Turns out when she has spoken to other "landlords" in the Lafayette area, when they find out she is black, they've been asking "Well how black are you?" What?!? And, because she is so well-spoken, some automatically assume that she's a white woman, and when she inquires about the property, they've said "Oh, you wouldn't want to live there. It's in a black neighborhood."

Dude, all of that is so wrong on so many levels. Way wrong. So now, I'm sitting here, extremely bothered and agitated by it. I want her to come and look at the Blakely house so I can ask her who she called so I can find out exactly who thaey are, which wouldn't be hard, and turn them in, because asking a potential tenant anything about their race, or sexuality for that matter, is illegal. And it's just plain WRONG.

i'm just amazed that this is going on in the town where I live. I mean, yes, I live in Indiana. Yes, I know Indiana has one of the highest numbers of KKK membership in the US. Yes, I know this is a redneck racist state, but I guess I never really thought about it until now. I mean, I grew up in South Bend, which feels like worlds apart from Lafayette, which is only 100 miles away. It just wasn't like that in South Bend. I mean, sure, we knew it was like that in Osceola, but, wow.

I'm still just really irked about the whole thing. The color of your skin doesn't matter, it's your actions and how you carry yourself and all that. And that goes for ANY race. I'm just....yeah.