I am not sure the difference in being black in the South versus the North. While I hear that racism in the North doesn’t have the firm grip that holds the South, events like the killing of Eric Garner and Aiyana Jones lurk in the back of my mind. My experience in the South has prepared me with the “social recipes” that Alfred Schuetz has described in his piece “The Stranger.” And in moving to New York, I have the anxiety that the structures to combat Southern racism I’ve learned will not work. That my interactions with anti-blackness here will take me off-guard, much like Grace Paley’s experience visiting the South.