Today I was home for lunch and a door-to-door salesman knocked on my door selling pest control. I suppose it is because of the location of our house on the edge of the neighborhood, but it seems like we get door-to-door salespeople all the time: siding, windows, trees, lawn care, magazines, newspapers, JWs...I could go on and on.
What was different, however, was that this salesman was black. Living in a town that is almost 100% white, one doesn't see around here a lot of people of different races. James Loewen lists my hometown as a possible 'sundown town', and I believe it...having talked to people around here for the past fourteen years, I find that there is a lot of residual racism. Nothing too blatant, but it's not surprising to see a Confederate battle flag flying on the back of a truck or off a shanty once in awhile.
Fast forward a few hours...I'm mindlessly scrolling through Facebook (why?) and I come across a post to the local 'news' page in which a woman reports her fear that a door-to-door salesman was in town. The general tone was of it was "HIDE THE KIDS! DANGEROUS PEOPLE ARE LURKING!" Now, I could be wrong here, but I'm guessing that one of my neighbors saw a black man walking up her driveway and immediately assumed that he was on his way to rape her. In fact, he was a very pleasant and friendly young man who left rather quickly after I said no (as I say to all such salesmen). But for some, seeing a man of a different race knock on her door gave her the 21st century version of a fainting spell.
It's disappointing, really. I like our little town and most of the people are nice. We have chosen to raise our children here and though there are far too many Trump apologists, it's a nice place to live and work. But every once in awhile I see and hear things that remind us that there are people who are out of their minds with fear...whether it's illegal aliens, homosexuals, or black men trying to sell them pest control, it's too much for the people who live their lives watching Fox News to meet somebody that is different than they are. It makes me sad, and it makes me think of that Scripture in which Jesus tells his disciples to shake the dust off their feet against those who reject them as a witness against them. I wonder if the salesman today left our community having gotten some ugly stares or a few rude comments and shook the dust off his feet against us, not because he didn't sell a lot, but because he saw hatred in the eyes of my neighbors? Will God judge our community for this? Is a history of our community a witness against us in the Kingdom of God? I fear it may be so.
