Whitey Ford
09-01-2020, 07:38 PM
‘You’re disgusting’: Biracial family in the Northland welcomed to KC with racist attacks
https://i.imgur.com/uvo5bLL.jpg
It started as soon as her family, along with all of their belongings and their dog Kingston, arrived in Kansas City from Southern California not quite two months ago, Maureen Roland says: The smiles that froze and then disappeared when her new Northland neighbors, near Parkville, caught a glimpse of her Black husband and biracial children. The woman down the street who put her hand up and said, “No, thank you,” when Maureen introduced herself. The slurs shouted from across the way, the pointing, the pretending to retch.
“Kansas City nice” is real, but so is Kansas City not-so-nice. There are people in our town who yell, “You’re disgusting!” at the Rolands’ house as they walk by, and who have gotten out of line at the Best Buy to avoid them.
One of the comments she’s since “overheard,” just as she was meant to, was, “He must be a rapper; that’s why she’s with him.” Another was aimed right at her head: “Stay with your own kind!” One day, “We were at Costco, in the parking lot, and a woman pointed at my husband. She was parked very close to us. She pointed at my husband, she pointed at me, she made a gesture like are you two together, and I smiled, I didn’t have my mask on yet, I smiled and nodded. I thought she was going to say something positive. She pointed at my daughter, who I was getting out of her carseat, and she gestured as if she was throwing up. And it’s things like that that my daughter sees.”
She finally wrote about all of this, she says, “because I’m sitting at my breakfast table and my kids are right there and a guy stops as he’s walking by.” A guy who has in the past shouted, “You’re disgusting” at her family.
https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/melinda-henneberger/article245332925.html
https://i.imgur.com/uvo5bLL.jpg
It started as soon as her family, along with all of their belongings and their dog Kingston, arrived in Kansas City from Southern California not quite two months ago, Maureen Roland says: The smiles that froze and then disappeared when her new Northland neighbors, near Parkville, caught a glimpse of her Black husband and biracial children. The woman down the street who put her hand up and said, “No, thank you,” when Maureen introduced herself. The slurs shouted from across the way, the pointing, the pretending to retch.
“Kansas City nice” is real, but so is Kansas City not-so-nice. There are people in our town who yell, “You’re disgusting!” at the Rolands’ house as they walk by, and who have gotten out of line at the Best Buy to avoid them.
One of the comments she’s since “overheard,” just as she was meant to, was, “He must be a rapper; that’s why she’s with him.” Another was aimed right at her head: “Stay with your own kind!” One day, “We were at Costco, in the parking lot, and a woman pointed at my husband. She was parked very close to us. She pointed at my husband, she pointed at me, she made a gesture like are you two together, and I smiled, I didn’t have my mask on yet, I smiled and nodded. I thought she was going to say something positive. She pointed at my daughter, who I was getting out of her carseat, and she gestured as if she was throwing up. And it’s things like that that my daughter sees.”
She finally wrote about all of this, she says, “because I’m sitting at my breakfast table and my kids are right there and a guy stops as he’s walking by.” A guy who has in the past shouted, “You’re disgusting” at her family.
https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/melinda-henneberger/article245332925.html