I live in a "white" town in a "white" county in a "white" state (Wisconsin).

Since I have been reading and writing about being white in America, I have been on the lookout for people who are not white in my so-called white town. Turns out there are a shit-ton of not white folks here. Hmong, Latinx, Black, Native, Mixed. My biggest point of contact is in stores when they take my money. But I see them everywhere. It is weird to me that before this rising awareness I thought my town was like 99% white - like a f***ing Mayberry of the north. Was I blind? Yes. I was.

I don't know if I would have registered how many not-white people are in my town if George Floyd hadn't been killed and I hadn't gone out in the street and yelled and I hadn't bought a few books and listened to a few podcasts. It is like I willfully was seeing white and ignoring everybody else. I'm ashamed of myself.

I’m not in any sort of power in my town like the other Andy.

In the rural areas here we have factory farms with a mostly Mexican workforce that stays on the farms and sends money home to Mexico, but I have to assume their kids are in schools and they shop in town and their kids are growing up bilingual American.

If this part of Wisconsin is not 99% white, then probably the all-white Mayberry doesn't exist anywhere except in our collective psychosis.

Thanks for watching all those episodes so I don't have to.