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Submit your thoughts on A PLACE OF OUR OWN.
We invite you to respond to the questions below or add your comments. Selected submissions will be posted on our Talkback page, so check back regularly and join the discussion.
- For many well-to-do African-Americans, Oak Bluffs offered, as Phil Reed says in A PLACE OF OUR OWN, “a chance to put your guard down.” Have you ever sought out a community that provided a sense of belonging not found elsewhere in everyday life? If so, where?
- Even within the tightly knit black community of Oak Bluffs, conflicts regarding class, color and age still exist. Do you think tensions among similar groups of people are unavoidable—regardless of how much they share as an “outsider” community? Why or why not?
- Older African Americans often struggled in a hostile world of overt racism so that their children and grandchildren would not. As Stanley Nelson says, “Nothing in the way I grew up could compare to my father’s experience of segregation. I was the product of the black upper middle class life my father pushed so hard to reach.” What privileges do you feel you have as a result of the work of the generations that came before you? Are there any paths that you will carve for the generations that follow?
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