I am re-reading The Help for our book club which focuses on racial attitudes in the 60's, and the library book I started last night has several gay characters in leading roles.
I am aware that I have attitude issues----other people have prejudices. But I think they aren't the common ones.
Husband #1 and I had black friends in Chicago in the 60's and they described the hassle it was for them to travel in the south in those days. How hard it was to find a lodging place, or a place to have a nice dinner, and how they did not want to be stopped by any local policemen for any reason at any time.
We enjoyed being city dwellers for a time because of the mix of races and attitudes, the wonderful ethnic foods, other languages, other skin tones, other voices.
We completed our family by adopting two sons from Colombia, South America, and so increased the diversity in our community by quite a lot. Because by that time we were back up north where we have a healthy mixture of various European nationalities, and a great many native American or first nation tribes, but not too many others. (Not in the 70's, anyway.)
I found out after my sons were adults that the road wasn't always smooth for them in school and that there was plenty of harassment from a few kids.
Michigan History magazine recounts the prejudice that every new ethnic group that settled here experienced. And at the root of each wave of immigrants was the fear that they would be taking all the available jobs. This happened with the Swedes, the Finns, and the Italians. Often when the Cornish men arrived they came because they were the experienced deep shaft miners. So, because they knew the ropes, they ended up in positions of authority, which brought about resentment, no doubt.
We still aren't extremely diverse, though we have a few black families, a number of Asian doctors, Filipino nurses, Thai cooks, and a smattering of other representatives of other cultures. But for me, experiencing greater diversity is one of the greatest reasons to travel. Canada is a great destination in this regard. (Just keep in mind that it's easy to get into Canada, but not as easy to return.)
Your post reminded me of the fact that German immigrants in the United States during WWI were very unpopular. I have often wondered how my paternal grandmother and her brother were accepted in Menominee County Michigan during the first twenty years after their arrival, approx. 1904 to 1924. These were two children of Hispanic heritage who came out from NYC on one of the orphan trains from the New York Foundling Hospital. They were treated as family by a childless German couple who had immigrated several years earlier. The children were never legally adopted, but were surely adopted in heart and soul....
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting view to ponder this evening. I went to a school that was 98% white. I didn't really "get" that I was in such a white school until I went to the University of New Mexico for my first year of college. I remember looking around at all of the nationalities in awe.
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