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Post by existentialcrisis on Feb 5, 2010 15:04:59 GMT
That's interesting K2, because I have also found the contrary. There is not much diversity in the Maritime provinces. Where I was specifically brought up there were no black children, and also never a racist comment. But in other suburbs, with a mix of black and white students, there were big race conflicts. I think it mostly wears off after people graduate high school, as last Christmas my cousin didn't remember ever having complained about the blacks in his high school, and that was only a couple years ago. In the rural, very white, areas I've lived in there were undoubtedly racist jokes told, but I don't believe there was actually any hatred behind them. I believe Calgary is so racist because it was essentially a redneck city, and when it had it's boom, many immigrants moved here. The whole North East of Calgary is pretty much immigrants from India. And I would say 60-70% of my work place is Asian. I have never heard so many racist comments as when I'm around other white people who mistakenly think I share their views just because my skin happens to be the same color as theirs. Basically, it has been my experience that racism occurs when there is a proximity. Otherwise, it's not a point of concern.
Sorry for the drift...
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Post by lola on Feb 5, 2010 17:49:01 GMT
I think I agree with Exista on the proximity thing, generally. For instance, there were few Jews in my hometown, and basically no antisemitism. I've only ever seen anti-American Indian sentiment in the Southwest, or anti-Mexican where they are there competing for jobs. My mother grew up in suburban Boston among Italians and Irish, and has no prejudice against blacks.
I think you get problems when people rub up against each other. My mother's dear Jewish college roommate went on a tour of Israel and came back saying she was never going somewhere with a bunch of Jews again.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2010 18:08:31 GMT
ET, I think the main thing is the media portrayal. Canada celebrates its racial mix and the success stories of immigrants (I think). The French media are always playing up the problems and dangers. You don't need to actually see the people -- all you have to do is see them on television!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2010 19:15:56 GMT
I've haven't come across any racism at all since I've lived in NB. The UK and other places were a another matter altogether.
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Post by Kimby on Feb 15, 2010 16:26:38 GMT
That's interesting K2, because I have also found the contrary... Basically, it has been my experience that racism occurs when there is a proximity. Otherwise, it's not a point of concern. I'm with Ex Crisis - and against Kerouac - on this one. Living in a state with almost no black people, it just isn't on most people's radar to be against blacks. (Here if you see a black, you know he/she's an athlete or an entertainer! But almost no one lives next door to "one") But in Wisconsin where I grew up there was a lot more racisim, particularly in Milwaukee where the most blacks lived. Not to say that there isn't discrimination in Montana. If we were talking about Indians/Native Americans, many Montanans would claim a negative opinion of them. It's not inbred, it's environmental. If your parents didn't like a particular group, you will grow up with those same predjudices, until you get old enough to make up your own mind based on your own experiences. BTW, has no one else wondered why the thread name uses "depreciating" instead of "deprecating" ?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2010 16:31:06 GMT
I agree with Kimby and Ex Crisis. Being a person of color, I have found more racism where there are more people of color and much less (actually none here), where I am the only Indian person in town.
It's kind of funny really, as most people know so little about people from India here that they wonder and ask where I'm from and it just doesn't seem to register. Most people assume I am either native Indian or Spanish, these they are familiar with. It's interesting.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 15, 2010 16:41:33 GMT
My experience has been that you don't need proximity to have prejudice. There seem to be "official" prejudices to which people subscribe without having contact with the despised group.
You'll generally hear prejudiced remarks on a casual basis, as the proud owners of the prejudices assume that neither you nor your family are part of these horrible people they rightfully dislike.
In a way, it's useful that ignorant, rude people cheerfully flaunt these prejudices. You can scratch them off your list without the bother of getting to know them better.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2010 16:52:03 GMT
That is also true, Bixa. My ex-husband and I moved around quite a bit, lived in various parts of Canada and in the UK too. And it always amazed me that prejudiced people would talk of minorities in such a degrading way, totally forgetting (or overlooking) the fact that I was also a person of color. In their minds I was exempt because my husband was white. It always annoyed me and I'd get into arguments about it and felt that I had to educate them. In the end I just gave up, just couldn't be bothered with it anymore...
But the things I heard as an 'insider' where very disturbing to say the least.
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Post by Kimby on Feb 15, 2010 19:49:21 GMT
My experience has been that you don't need proximity to have prejudice. There seem to be "official" prejudices to which people subscribe without having contact with the despised group. I guess we should admit that racisim can exist as an internal prejudice that isn't ACTED upon. For example, while I may feel like crossing to the other side of the street upon seeing two black males approaching at night, I certainly wouldn't spray paint "nigger" on their garage door. Or try to scare away a black couple looking at the house next door with a realtor. Or get up and move to another seat if a black person sat next to me. And many self-proclaimed non-racists tell plenty of jokes about people of color or ethnicity, but don't shout at them to go back where they came from when they actually run into someone who is the butt of their jokes.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2010 21:48:12 GMT
I was not generalizing about whether people with or without the presence of other cultures or races react, I was just saying that that is how it is in Alsace and probably some other areas in France. The media is very much to blame because people get their opinions from television these days. You don't actually need to see the people you are trained to dislike. How many people ever actually saw a horrible Soviet, an evil Chinese or any of those dastardly Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, North Koreans, Vietnamese, etc.? And yet they despised them.
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Post by betsie on Sept 27, 2010 17:13:12 GMT
My take on the South, briefly:
The old South was a fine culture, with one fatal flaw, slavery, for which it paid a terrible price. It was an agrarian culture with its own traditions and values. I do not mean the 'moonlight and magnolia' romanticised rubbish, but the whole of Southern society, including yeoman farmers, small farmers, small townspeople, most of whom had no slaves and nothing to do with slavery.
All those young Virgils and Homers and did not lay down their spades and ploughs to fight for slavery, they fought and died for their country and culture, having a strong and clear sense of nationhood. It appeared to many and still does to me, that the South had a legal right to secede from the Union, but had to go to war to attempt to do so.
After the war, the South was subjected to unnecessary humiliation and exploitation by the North, which contributed to some degree to the growth of KKK-ism, etc. Ridicule of Southern culture continues even today, when many Southerners are ashamed of their heritage or know little about it.
Not everything was lost though: I noticed that there is still a general adherence to the habit of rhetoric. The ruling classes in the South were not very literary, preferring history, the classics and rhetoric as cultural expressions. Everybody in the South still uses rhetoric delightfully, even getting on a bus means a lengthy exchange with the driver, who will lean back and say, "Now tell me, how are you doing, Miss, on this beautiful summer morning?" One gives an appropriately lengthy response and the game goes back and forth.
Although the relations between black and white were not equal, they did share a culture, which was a reason for many blacks to re-emmigrate to the South, after tasting wage slavery and segregation in the North. Some black housekeepers positively terrorised the families they worked for in the South: one man told me his granddad was having an important dinner with business guests when the housekeeper came and banged her fist on the table and said, "quit mouthing off and eat the food I put in front of you ten minutes ago!" Some years later there was a row between her and the son of the family, He told her she was fired. She said, "You can't fire me! Who the hell do you think you are? I was in this family long before you were, and I ain't going nowhere!"
Often when a culture is threatened with extinction, there is a sudden surge of artistic creativity, and in the South this took the form of the Southern Renaissance in literature, the best of which is not uncritical of the South, neither is it romantic, but it stands as a monument to a beloved culture. We also have the South to thank for most of the New Critics, who revolutionised the way literature and criticism was taught in universities and schools.
I loved the South, and I can never hear this song without getting tears in my eyes. It was written by a Canadian, who went down South, talked to people and "got it."
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2010 17:20:53 GMT
That is a lovely post, betsie. I might have now been a Parisian twice as long, but I will always be a Southerner.
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Post by betsie on Sept 27, 2010 17:30:50 GMT
And I bet you hate it when people call you a "yankee"
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2010 17:39:11 GMT
Nobody calls me a Yankee. They think I am Dutch, Belgian or Swiss.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2010 11:17:37 GMT
I get called Yankee all the time!!!! I don't mind because I know it's said affectionately,having lived here in the South since 1978,I've been adopted,however,I know I can never call myself a true Southerner,and well,I shouldn't. I really am a Yankee at heart. Betsie,this was one of the more brilliant posts I've read on this Port. I do thank you for your insight into a delicate topic. Amid all the ignorance displayed in here,it was truly a breathe of fresh air. Thank you from the bottom of my Yankee heart. (I did have my husband read it btw,a born New Orleanian,and he appreciated it as well). Do stick around please!!!
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Post by betsie on Sept 29, 2010 11:31:04 GMT
Aah, bless you, Casimira! How kind of you. Another characteristic of the South I forgot to mention is that they stick their noses into your life all the time. ;D Our next-door neighbour drove us everywhere when we first moved into the condo: utilities office, first shopping, etc. When I took my daughter to register for school we walked to the education office. They were utterly horrified that we had walked on such a cold day (cold to them, but not for us). They sent out for hot soup and sandwiches for us, interrogated us about Holland, finally filled in the necessary forms and then drove us back to our condo!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2010 11:35:55 GMT
Yes,that is so very true!! And I have learned to appreciate the degree of familiarity this manner affords/allows. Having recently just spent two weeks in NY,ten days of which was in my home town,I so very quickly recalled how staid,uptight,and reserved,Puritan like Yankees can really,really be!!!
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Post by betsie on Sept 29, 2010 12:44:11 GMT
Indeed, the religion is long gone, but the Puritan sensibility is still alive and well in the north-east.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2010 13:00:31 GMT
Naturally, having lived in France for so long, I am extremely reserved now, but whenever I'm in the south, I don't mind people being nosy or excessively familiar at all -- that's the way they're supposed to be.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2010 9:58:26 GMT
Interesting that you mention the Puritan sensibility,Betsie. Where I grew up was a mecca for old White Anglican Protestants,many who arrived in the 1600's. The town is the first English settlement in New York State,founded in 1652. During the late 1800's,when Polish and Irish families began settling there,some of them purchased large tracts of land to farm potatoes.My family was one of them. These families were very unwelcome,and there were excerpts in my Grandmother's diary about some of the injustices that they had to endure by the WASP families. Some to the extreme,harassment,true hate crimes.Not too unlike the cross burnings here in the South. This prejudice filtered down to my generation. As a young child,and early adolescent,I was excluded from social events,sleep overs with my classmates etc. because I was Polish.My friends ,many of them were not allowed to come to my house to play because their parents forbid them coming into a Polish home. Very hurtful things. It was at the behest of their parents,not my peers. I will never forget being devastated on several occasions for this,and the pain and outrage my mother experienced trying to console me. Mind you,this was in the early 1960's!!! I feel some of this behavior to this day when I go to visit there. Although,not nearly as overt in nature, it's there.I go to visit some of these old friends,and their elderly parents,the very same people who were unwelcoming to me then,remain hostile well,barely tolerant is a better way to describe it. I am more amused at their ignorance now. But,the memories of the hurt it conjures up remain to this day.
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Post by betsie on Sept 30, 2010 10:24:55 GMT
Yes, there was a lot of snobbery and still is. I suppose you've heard of the Boston Brahmins, American aristocrats who "claim hereditary descent from the English Protestants who founded the city of Boston, Massachusetts, and settled New England. They are considered part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment. They are associated with the distinctive Boston Brahmin accent."
Some of them claim connections to the British aristocracy, but it's there Southern counterparts who really have aristocratic roots (as if it mattered anyway).
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Post by lagatta on Oct 31, 2016 22:28:02 GMT
Here is a short, reflective film on the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to Northern industrial cities, in this case Chicago:
And yes, I know that many poor Southern Whites especially from the hill country also took the northward route.
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