In this condo building are various lawyers, a few of them are Judges, friendly types who would not smack you down if your opinions differed from their opinions. My grandkid was recently admitted to the High Court in New Zealand, and yes, she’s a genuine barrister who graduated wearing a curly white wig. About ready to start her second semester at Case Western Reserve LS in Cleveland, she doesn’t resent having to spend an additional year preparing to take the New York bar exams, the extra year being required for grads of “foreign” schools. Let me brag. She received ‘honors’ in three of her classes.
She’s leaning heavily toward specializing in immigration law, having attended the University of Arizona where she was well aware of the problems of border control. Additionally, she’s very aware of discrimination because she hails from a long line of Chippewa Native-Americans from Wisconsin who felt, and still feel, the sting of being “different.” I worried about her when she sped off to begin her freshman year at the U of A, primarily because of fears she’d be viewed as not one of the “others.” When I expressed my fears, she laughed and told me students these days don’t care about difference, in fact, they embrace it. Her list of friends of all persuasions would seem to confirm that. Most of her fellow classmates in Cleveland represent cultures from many countries. It helps too that she married a genuine European, an economist whose parents and grandparents live in Slovakia. She has the best of all worlds, and the two shuttle back and forth from continent to continent.
I grew up in a rural Iowa community and my friends were all white and mostly had blonde hair and blue eyes. It wasn’t until we moved to Kansas City in the turbulent Civil Rights ’50s, that I even knew black Americans existed, and frankly I was not in that loop, though I wish I had been. When I finally settled in the white suburbs of Brookfield, in the days of turbulence when Father James Groppi was marching on behalf of black citizens, I was again insulated, though some of my enlightened East Side friends were carrying signs and had joined hands to march with Groppi. I didn’t really wake up until the Vietnam era when my brother was caught in the crosshairs of a terrible war. It dawned on my developing brain that the world was filled with “differences,” and I was in that world.
Below me, in the lobby of this building, citizens of diverse cultures come and go, so in this respect my environment is much healthier than the protected places where I slowly grew to be an adult. Detroit and Chicago didn’t teach me much, but that was because as a white citizen I continued to live wrapped in suburbia. Now and then, within these walls, discrimination rears forth: a stolen Menorah, a nasty aside, a raised eyebrow and whines about the homeless who are perceived as “threats to the neighborhood.” I hate the off-putting neighborhood signs that suggest we should be on the lookout for trouble, and it is equally troubling to see less fortunate citizens treated as untouchables. We are an imperfect species.
As part of my writing career, I find myself penning a weekly column for my Iowa hometown. It’s owned and edited by a woman of Korean heritage who likely has felt the sting of discrimination. Happily she gives me her full support and the freedom to address issues to the locals who are primarily faith-based Republicans. Last year I wrote a column supporting same-sex marriage (a big topic in Iowa), and not long after, I wrote an article pointing out that the little town at one time was a “Sundown Town,” (or so it says in a book by the same title), where folks who were different (black folks) were advised to leave before sundown. The stone cold silence from the readers of the column was, to put it mildly..stone cold..though one reader did write the editor to say that I was a remnant of Selma, Alabama. Not one person wrote to defend my outsider position. Not one.
Welcome to 2011. I’ve included an image by my friend Stella Cretek. Titled “Fleecing,” it’s a reminder that in this wretched economy, taxes will soon be due.
