Not so long ago, in a town in Greater Hartford — which might as well have been in a universe far, far away — I visited a coffee shop to get a change of scenery while revising a novel.
The cafe itself was lovely, the staff friendly, and food and beverages tasty. No complaints there.
While working, I looked up every time someone new came in. That’s what you do when you’re highly distractible.
After just ten minutes, I began to decipher why something felt off here. Absolutely no visible ethnic diversity.
This is not the case at cafes in Hartford or even West Hartford.
It’s not like I was in the hinterlands of the state. It was a short trip there by public transportation.
It was almost an hour before I saw any obvious racial or ethnic diversity, and I should say that business was steady.
It wasn’t a function of this particular establishment, though. As I later walked around the area, the trend continued. I’d completely forgotten that there are towns not so far from Hartford where 95% of the population is White. That’s not a guess. I later looked up the town’s demographics. Yikes.
I had forgotten about this experience until walking around Hartford with my camera and finding how, with no effort on my part, I can easily show a much wider range of the human experience. I don’t have to wait an hour, half an hour, or even 15 minutes to see people who look different or speak differently from me.
Choosing to forever move out of the town I grew up in, which is classified as highly racially segregated, was among the healthiest decisions that I have made. If I ever move from Hartford, it won’t be back into a place as racially segregated as that or the town I visited for coffee a few weeks ago. I don’t care how good their school systems might be.
Anyway, in this last week in Hartford I got to see people making the best of a few warmer days before temperatures dropped and we got a foot of snow.
It hasn’t been silent since the storm, but I had decidedly taken enough photos for the week. This means that you aren’t seeing the people who were out shoveling every couple hours while the snow was still falling, nor all the folks who turned out for multiple rallies. There are snow people all over the place, but I don’t have pictures of those who made them, either.
I’m hoping this series challenges ideas some may hold about what downtown Hartford looks like post-2020, though I certainly don’t plan on focusing this on the central business district. As it gets warmer and as my schedule allows, my own walking routes will extend farther out.
For one thing, we don’t have people come into the city only for UConn games. Let’s clear up that nonsense right now. Hartford is not taped together by UConn and parking lots, no matter what their execs might claim.
Until next week . . .
