All’s fair in race and politics

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 a group that was 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 some discomfort in relating to some of my family and many of my classmates at school. 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 and quiet.

The people at the County Fair looked like my family. 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 that 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 with the other people at that County Fair. I was making assumptions about them – that they would be prejudiced against those of other races and sexual orientations like the friends I was with. And it is likely that some percentage of them had those prejudices. But it is also likely that many did not. And it is also 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 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 towards 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 United States of America. 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 believe that I love my family and that they love me. I don’t believe that all our ills will be healed by skeeball, tilt-a-whirl, and funnel cake, but I believe that all of us partaking sure can’t hurt. Do you have any extra tickets?