I spent a lot of my time in DC thinking about race. Part of that was natural and most welcome. I'd left the Northwest, where clusters of lily white people prattle importantly about diversity in lieu of practicing it, and immersed myself in actual diversity.
Within hours of landing, I went drinking with a guy I met at my hotel. "I know a place," he said. "C'mon." As I listened to him complain about having to pay for his son's wedding, I marveled at the speed with which I'd made a friend. This would be typical of my whole trip. People were engaging me in more than pleasantries and looking me in the eye, and a lot of their faces, including Dad's, were black. I sipped my drink and pretended to care about his kid's wedding and felt really, really homesick. I would spend the rest of my trip trying to sort out what the racial component is of my homesickness. I'm still not sure. It's all tangled up.
I'm far more sure that there's a creepy, unsettling segregation going on in DC. Oh, not with the people, although there's probably that too—in the exhibits. The Air and Space Museum cannot feature the Tuskegee Airmen with the rest of the World War II exhibits; they are off in the discrete black wing. Likewise with every other black American historical artifact and figure. They are all in separate black exhibits. The more it went on, the itchier I got. By the time I came across the black section of the Presidential portrait gallery, it was impossible not to think about segregation.
(And no, it's not Obama's portrait. It was a bunch of people I've never heard of and whose inclusion I found utterly mystifying.)
I'm certain these separate exhibits are well-meaning. I'm sure it's acquiescing to demands and/or pandering. Motivation aside, though, I couldn't help but wonder what the practical difference is between this and Jim Crow. "Sure, we'll give yu'uns an exhibit. Raght ovah here in the corner," I heard a ball-scratching redneck sneer before spitting at their feet.