I live in a “nice” neighborhood, too

It’s the third time in 30 days I’ve read or heard the account of a person like me who had to prove or justify why they lived in their home.

When I say “like me,” I mean, black, middle class and living in a mostly white neighborhood. Though my subdivision in suburban Oklahoma City is becoming more diverse with black, mixed and East Indian families, it’s also growing quickly among young white couples with kids.

I really like my neighborhood. It’s quiet, dog-friendly (I hear more barking than other noises) and people are nice. I do know my neighbors directly next door to me and across the street. I would hope they know it’s me who lives there.

But three affluent African Americans have been questioned about that very reality. In late October, police stopped Dorothy Bland, dean of the Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas, while she walked in her neighborhood.

On Nov. 18, Fay Wells wrote in The Washington Post about police drawing weapons on her in her apartment after a white neighbor reported her. He didn’t know her and thought she had broken in his neighbor’s apartment. He didn’t realize that she was the neighbor. Their relationship has been strained since.

This week, “30 Rock” actor Keith Powell describes an encounter with police when a party at his home got loud and his neighbors called the police. Powell, star of the new original web series “Keith Broke His Leg,” admits the music was loud and offered to turn it down. He said a police officer then began to lecture him and tell him, “I live in a nice neighborhood and I should feel privileged that the neighbors let me live in this nice neighborhood. And that I shouldn’t do anything to disrepect them.”

Deeply affected, Powell wrote a segment on his experience, titled “Mellow.”

I have experienced being called the N-Word. Twice. But I have not been questioned about my right to be in a certain place, let alone my neighborhood.

Yet.

Stories like these make me wonder if one day someone will question whether I belong in my home or my neighborhood. I’m a journalist and I work late hours like many journalists do. What if I go to open my door and police surround me, with dogs?

Surely that could never happen.

Wells, vice president of strategy at a company in California, never thought the K9 unit would bear its teeth at her as officers pointed guns in her doorway.

That really frightens me, but then I remember that my immediate neighbors do know me. One is an interracial couple with dogs that bark at my dog through the fence.

The other is a white woman, former Navy, who is cool and also knows my dog. (As I said, we’re a dog-friendly neighborhood). We both sit our garbage out late at night and once watched the lunar eclipse together. We talk across the street at each other about diet, exercise and animals.

I like and trust these people. The neighbors next to these neighbors, both white, might be a little iffy in the “knowing me” department. I’d better invite them to the next Christmas party.

Just in case.