Absolutely. I moved from urban Southeastern Wisconsin to the upper peninsula of Michigan in a rural area. I love visiting that spot, and I got a job offer five years ago while on vacation. I snatched the opportunity to move to my favorite place and uprooted my life in under two months. I didn’t last two years before coming back.

The amount of times I got into verbal altercations with strangers and acquaintances over their use of racial slurs, most often the N-word, made me become a homebody. I was a bartender, though, so you can’t exactly hide.

That’s not to say I haven’t heard it in public all throughout Wisconsin. The difference was how comfortable people felt using these words and sharing openly racist views and stories like they were bragging about it. It felt like an area where people breathed a sigh of relief and took their hoods off. I couldn’t stomach staying in a place where certain friends of mine couldn’t comfortably visit.

Still, all that is nothing compared to what I saw and heard living in Tennessee. It’s sad and frightening how many communities are like this.