This summer, my family and I visited friends, who live in northwestern Illinois, for a weekend of swimming, roasting marshmallows, and looking up at the stars. One afternoon, our hosts invited us to attend the local county fair — rides, games, and tasty treats were on offer, so we said yes. We drove over country roads, past rows of corn and gently rolling hills to the fairground, where the parking lot attendants directed us into a crowded field of cars.
As we walked in, I started to feel some discomfort about the differences between our group and most of the other people I could see. We were both racially mixed and of different sexual orientations. But as we waited in line for our tickets, I started to recognize that my discomfort was less connected to the people I was with and more connected to my own experiences.
I grew up in a somewhat rural area of Wisconsin. My parents came from an even more rural community, and some of my aunts, uncles, and cousins still lived there when I was growing up. But I always felt discomfort in relating to some of my family and many of my classmates. I was quiet. I was more brainy than brawny. And while American culture as a whole has a complicated relationship with introversion and intellectualism, I think the friction is especially acute with rural white American culture. What is prized for young men is to be strong, outgoing, and full of common sense, not to be thoughtful, quiet, and book-smart.
The people at the County Fair looked like my cousins, like their children, like my aunts and uncles, like my grandparents. They were white, rural people. Many of them wore T-shirts touting motorcycles, rock music, and the rural communities they were part of. And I recognized I was more comfortable with the people I had come with than those I saw around me.
I felt some dissonance in recognizing that discomfort. And more than feeling uncomfortable, I recognized that I felt some lack of respect for them. I was making assumptions — that they would be prejudiced against those of other races and sexual orientations. And it is likely that some percentage of them had those prejudices. But it is also likely that many did not. And it is true that an individual’s racism or prejudice does not undermine their value as a human being. And it doesn’t mean that they are incapable of learning and change.
My grandparents and aunts and uncles grew up believing that their family members should marry other white people. But from the moment I brought my Asian-American girlfriend, now my spouse, to meet them, they were only loving toward her. I’m sure when they were growing up and having their own children in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, they never envisioned an Asian-American woman being part of their family. But when that happened, they accepted it. And more than accepting, they embraced her.
This is not a paean to the “melting pot” of the U.S. I don’t believe we will all just hold hands and magically get along. But I also do believe in the basic decency of most people — and the capacity of every person to change, if they are willing.
I love my family and I believe that they love me. I don’t believe that all our ills will be healed by skeeball, tilt-a-whirl, and funnel cakes, but I believe that all of us partaking sure can’t hurt.
Do you have any extra tickets?
Jim Schwartz is an Oak Park resident, an educator, and a blogger at Entwining.org.