22 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: An Open Letter to the Reddit Community
Nobody will see this, but it's OK, because it's not even my story.
My hometown is really white. There were no black people, at all. No black people in the region, hardly any black people in the whole country.
In some towns there were Moroccans, sometimes Roma people too. Not in my hometown. Expensive housing, tons of summer-only inhabitants, typical coastal, tourism-oriented little town.
And 20 years ago, black men arrived here. They stood out like a sore thumb: tall, young, athletic, and obviously black. Many people regarded them with mistrust.
They didn't speak any of the local languages. But they wanted to work. So, as is traditional, they took the jobs the locals didn't want. They became fishermen, the ones that stay at sea for months on end. Really tough job that used to be the main source of income for the town, until tourism took over. The kind of job that young local people didn't want to get into.
These black men spent months at a time out at sea, fishing, with older local men. So, when ashore, they started interacting more and more. They started learning the languages too; at first they couldn't write in those languages, but they got really good at speaking them, because they learned them from constant exposure and repetition.
So, 15 years ago, you could see groups of fishermen having drinks; for every 4 white, older fishermen, there was one younger, black fisherman. And they spoke the same language, and they had each other's back.
And then the black women came. I don't know how it happened, but it did: suddenly there were black women too, and those black women married those black men. I'm sure there could be some mixing too, but I left the town, so I don't know.
Now there are black kids at the local high school. They speak the local languages and they are local, born and bred. They have the same rights and the same opportunities. And I'm so happy everything turned out right. Their parents had to fight tooth and nail for it, but it turned out right.
And that's their story.
Comment by kn0thing at 01/02/2017 at 18:57 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I saw it. Thank you for sharing it.