In my last post I brought up the subject of how people outside The South view The South. I think I need to dig deeper into how we, as individuals and groups, view other groups of people. To start out, let me say that I grew up moving from house to house on a regular basis. As a kid, this sucked, because I was really shy to start with. With my family's moving, I continually had to meet and find new friends. Looking back now, this sense of not being grounded in one area gave me a different view of people. On one hand, there were differences in culture as I moved from the Midwest to the Southwest to the Northwest and then to Northern and then Southern California. Cultures were different in different places. But people, were pretty much the same. People went to school as kids, grew up, got jobs, and worked to support their families. Despite the differences in language, food, religion, and recreational activities, I learned that people everywhere are largely similar.
At the same time, we see political leaders and others continually dividing people into different groups. As we grow up, we learn prejudices from our families and those around us concerning "other people." I once wrote a poem about a guy who went out looking for the line between "us" and "them. Everywhere he went, people told him about "them," but try as he might, he couldn't find the dividing line between "us" and "them." Everywhere he went, it was just "us." That's one of the many poems I lost when I came to North Carolina, so I can't share it now. But you get the point, people grow up in a population that is "us". All our lives, we are told things about other groups of people... "them." But rarely to people ever dive into why those prejudices exist. Most people just accept the prejudices they are taught without thinking much about them. This is really unfortunate, and the cause for a lot of trouble in our society.
This is where travel plays a key role in development as an individual. As a person travels around the country and around the world, they meet AND GET TO KNOW individuals from other cultures. When a person begins to understand other people on a personal level, they see past the differences and into the similarities they share with those people. The other people stop being "them," and become part of "us."
The best example I can think of right now is the prejudices of people in California and The South as they view each other. Most people here in The South are taught the Californians are a bunch of crazy fools, eating granola and full of ridiculous "liberal" ideas. Likewise, people in California see The South as a bunch of people who hold deep prejudices based on both race and religion. Both viewpoints are largely wrong.
Here in North Carolina, for example, if you mention race, people think in black and white terms, literally. They tend to forget about the Latinos here, the big Greek population in nearby Winston-Salem, the Indians (from India) the American Indians (or Native Americans as they're usually called now) and the other minorities that live here. Hundreds of years of slavery brought Africans by force which evolved into today's African-American population. The main issues of race here over the years are between the white European-American descendants, and the black African-American descendants. All other smaller groups here are largely forgotten.
Now when you mention race in Southern California, for example, it's a whole different story, because Californians are more aware of the large number of different groups that live there. It's not just black and white, but it's various types of Asians, Indians (from India), Arabs, Persians (there's a difference between those two), a wide variety of Latinos (from Mexico, Central America, and South America) and other minority groups like Russians, and Hindus, and Sikhs and a whole bunch more. Since Southern California is much more of a melting pot then The South, people are more aware of the wide variety of people besides the black community in their region. Here's another fact that will blow your mind, there are a ton of rednecks in California. Really. Once you get out of the major urban areas, to the hundreds of smaller towns, you find a lot of rednecks. Even in the large cities, there are always country bars around. It's just one of the many groups living there.
Another thing people in The South don't realize is that the vast majority of Californians are not very weird. California has certain places that attract weirdos from around the world, and that's a large part of why so many new ideas, both good and bad, tend to take form in California. Those weird people toying with wild ideas is a large part of the reason that California is such an economic powerhouse in the 21st century. We now live in an era where ideas are the most valuable commodity, and places that attract people with outlandish ideas are also some of the economic powerhouses of the current era. At the same time, the former economic powerhouses of this country, the urban factory cities of yesteryear, are in serious decline for the most part.
Now, what about the way Californians view the Southern States. First and foremost, The South is the Bible Belt. The majority of people here are deeply religious. A huge number of Californians go to church. But there's also a huge number of people who have been turned off to traditional religions in California. Many have been turned off by the either/or nature of fundamentalist religions. Many have been turned off by what they see as hypocrisy in religions, which I touched on in my last post. There have been child molestation cases tied to religious groups, and not just in the Catholic church. Many cases in various other Christian churches have made the news over they years. Mostly though, many intellectual people see the doctrines of mainstream religions as very close-minded to a wide variety of issues and groups of people. In the Republican debate the night before last, several of the presidential candidates spoke on the subject of abortion, and on the rights they believe an unborn fetus has. Yet, not one of those candidates has a serious plan on how to pull the millions of really poor children out of poverty. The political machines that those Republican candidates are part of are actually reducing help for the poverty stricken in this country. These guys fight for the rights of unborn children, but don't seem to care much about those children once they're born. It's contradictions like this that have turned large amounts of people, especially in places like California, away from traditional religions. So those Californians tend to see people in the South as old-fashioned and not really in touch with the changes happening in today's society.
Both groups, Californians and Southerners, tend to believe the media reports about the other group, without doing much research into the facts. The same is true about the myriad of other groups out there when they look at people in other groups. These prejudices keep us divided. Yet, when it comes down to it, most people want to work and earn a decent living. They want to take care of their kids, and hope those children will have a better future. Across all kinds of differences in race, religion, ethnic groups, nationality, sexual orientation and other factors, most people are looking for the same basic things in life. Yet, we tend to forget that fact because of the prejudices we grew up in. Hopefully this post will give those of you who read it a reason to pause and think about what you've been taught about other groups of people, and to realize that those people are much more similar to you than you think.
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