Thank you for writing this. I, too, live in Austin now. I’m a transplant from Anchorage, Alaska which is oddly, one of the most racially diverse cities in the nation. People migrate there from Thailand, China, Peru, Samoa, Mexico, the Philippines, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Laos, Germany, Nigeria, the Congo, Sudan, not to mention Native Alaskans. And then you’ve got rich white people and poor white trash of all stripes — it’s more diverse than Queens. There are gun-happy Trump voters, liberal tree-huggers, liberal gun-toting conservationists, neo-hippies, conservative black religious folk, meth-addled metal-heads and rasta-men. Everybody is all mixed up. It would probably be a “blue spot in a red state” if it weren’t so gerrymandered.

When I came to Austin five years ago, it took me awhile to figure out what was missing. Because I’m white, and I “fit in,” I didn’t realize it until that day in November of 2016. Like you, I woke up feeling awful. Like you, I had some terrible experiences centered not around my race but around my gender: men behaving terribly. More terribly than usual. Yelling things. One pulled his penis out and started following me through Pease park.

That’s when I noticed other things — the liberal outrage. The women’s march, in which most of the marchers were white. Why? Was it only white women who got to be angry? Where were all the other colors? Black, brown, native American, Muslim?

You’re right about the liberal left, and about most of the cities. There’s a sneaking sense of self-righteousness. We think: because Donald Trump and his cronies are so wrong, we must be right. But that’s not how it works. Just because we’re not openly “racist” doesn’t mean we’re doing the right thing. I prefer the ragtag mess of Anchorage, imperfect as it is, to a white “liberal” Austin.

Do you think there’s any redemption for liberalism? Any good in it? Is there any way for us to work and live together? If cities were more like Harlem, or Anchorage, would America be a better place to live?