Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> James Rogers wrote,
> >At 05:30 PM 12/4/2000 -0500, Michael Lorrey wrote:
> >>I've also found that rural people
> >>will tend to trust a 'city slicker' if they don't fit in previously
> >>formed categories that equal 'con artist', while few city people would
> >>distrust a rural person at all, though they may have prejudices about
> >>them being quaint, simple, etc..
> >
> >I have to agree with Michael on this part at least. Most rural
> >people will generally give city people the benefit of the doubt if
> >you don't already fall into some category that has a well-deserved
> >reputation for being "no good". Odd or unusual people are usually
> >viewed as a curiosities and are generally dealt with in a friendly
> >manner.
>
> I'm sorry, but I can't buy this as a generalization. When I was in
> high school in rural Illinois, I saw local community members
> physically attack strangers because they were perceived to be gay,
> black, Mormons, atheists, communists, government agents, homeless or
> foreigners. In my experience, many rural people are not very
> tolerant of those who are different.
Judging a community from the behavior of drunk young punks who that
community would just as soon put in jail (and likely has at least once
or twice already) is even less statistically relevant. I saw the same
behavior as you describe, in both directions, in the five years I lived
in Seattle, but I wouldn't say that Seattle was a hotbed of hate crimes.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:33 MDT