GU: Austria is not a surprise. There were
I admit plenty of people there who were
perfectly polite to me, though; just that
there were those who weren't and who made
my skin crawl.

London took me completely aback. I was wearing
a YSL outfit (can neither afford nor fit into
such any more), and D. is married to someone
who is well-connected, so she dresses the
part. We were in an ostensibly civilized
restaurant in what God knows was a bastion
of civilization. That the worst example took
place there was shocking; I've been ignored
and moderately rudely treated in many
places, mostly in marginal areas, but here
not only did I "belong," I looked like I
"belonged."

Mostly in the US the racism has been, as you
say, transcended. Or at least, when it
occurs, it is much more genteel than it used
to be!

Which brings me to a semi-funny semi-offtopic
story, my last words on this subject here.
Takes place in a large US city, where I was
living at the time.

The president of the Suzuki Association of
America (that's violins, not motorcycles) was
taking off for Japan for a year to study at
the feet of the Master (this was quite a
while ago), so I had a going-away party for
him. Unfortunately, he brought a date - who
was black. On the way, they and another guest
had rocks and things heaved at them, but they
made it safely to my apartment. But then the
landlord called. He'd received a threat that
if we didn't get rid of the black woman
immediately, the house would be burned down.

One of the partygoers just turned out to be
assistant AG for civil rights affairs in that
particular state, so she called her boss and
had a police guard on the building, an
emergency restraining order against persons
unknown, and other safeguards - sort of
overkill, truth be told. But I wonder what
would have happened had we not been members
of a fairly privileged subsection of society.