Suburban fright isn't just in the suburbs. I had a co-worker who lived in the Longfellow neighborhood come pick me one Saturday evening to go out drinking with a group from work. I live in Lowry Hill East, and told her to drive straight down 26th Street from Hiawatha to my side street. She arrived to pick me up, literally gasping with shock: "Do you feel safe around here?" "Yeah, why?" And she truly didn't get why I would live (and enjoy living) in an area not solely populated by white people of Northern European descent. And I've been asked if I were Jewish (in some cases, accused of it) more times than I care to count, solely because of my dark hair and self-confident attitude. When I say truthfully that I'm Scotch-Irish and a somewhat collapsed Catholic, the response has ranged from: "You're kidding!" to "Yeah, sure!" to a darkly suspicious "Are you sure you're not Jewish?" The strange thing is that I never heard this until around the time I turned 30. Valerie Powers Ward 10
