Comment by jroseattle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jroseattle | Hacker News Reader

Ex-midwesterner, different coast. I did not enjoy growing up in the midwest.

I had a similar experience growing up: completely white town, minorities counted on one hand, zero african-americans. Not a single gay person to be found. Not until I attended college did I meet an african-american, or any non-native english speaker. Muslim? What's that? I was raised to believe african-americans, gays, and communists are bad, evil, flawed, un-welcome.

In junior high school, a friend invited me to attend a church social event near a river one night. Some of the guys put together a big, makeshift cross out of lumber they brought with them and planted it in the ground. We had a small bonfire going, and then they lit the cross. Several of the guys in the church put their Sunday robes on...then they pulled hoods over their faces. Yeah, KKK.

I knew a policeman who drove drunk all the time. I knew a teacher who bought high school students liquor many times. I knew a peer in high school sleeping with that teacher. I knew girls pregnant by 11th grade. I knew domestic violence that happened in my house, in my friends' homes, and in the homes of people I barely knew. In a small town, most of my friends and I experienced separated families through divorce.

My experience could be unique, or it could be quite common. At any rate, by the time I finished college, I needed to leave.

The midwest isn't all bad, but I saw some of the worst it has to offer.

> Not a single gay person to be found.

Honestly, that speaks for the repressive force of the culture more than the lack of other minorities. A lack of ethnicity can be somewhat explained by a lack of historic migration. Homosexuality is everywhere.

They were there; they're just still in hiding.

>repressive force of the culture

That was their point, if it wasn't obvious with the part about the KKK.

What year was this? I grew up in a midwest town and when I was young, and there were no black residents, but by the time I left there was. There certainly were other minority racial groups as well as gays as lesbians.

I am also a former small town Midwesterner. In the 90s, A gay couple moved in a house on the same block where I lived. Even though my parents told me to stay away (like they did with all people we didn't know, even in our "demo"), I don't think it mattered much because we eventually started mowing their lawn. In a mid-size elementary school, I remember a chinese and a black (maybe mixed) family. Another mixed family moved in next door around 2002 (black part was Jamaican). I didn't have a problem with any of them, and neither did anyone else that I knew. By the time I left for college, there were plenty of Mexicans.

My dad worked in a prison, which meant he spent his day around thieves, drug addicts, gangsters, murderers, sexual predators, and the like. He gave fear of those kinds of people to the family, and suspected everyone of being one.

Late 1980's.

There are now smaller minority groups (mostly Mexican/Latino), but that's it. Very small community.

Yeah nithing like that happens in big coastal cities.

I get it if that's sarcasm. Doesn't stuff like that happen everywhere?

Some things will, others won't. A policeman driving drunk will probably not happen very often in the city, it would be noticed and would have consequences (probably moving him to a rural area). KKK events are also less common in large cities. Wouldn't be so sure about domestic violence, guess that happens everywhere.

If you look hard enough, you will find it everywhere. But, its the amount of effort you have to do to see these events that makes the difference.

That's a class difference, if it exists at all. I grew up in the rural South, and moved to the East Coast in adulthood. There's no more, and no less, virtue to be found in either.

> My experience could be unique, or it could be quite common.

Well, I tried to make that clear...

I grew up on a farm in Kansas outside of a town of 650 people. No minorities, 7 different christian churches.

One thing that stuck out, we had a gay tennis coach who everyone loved. Easy to hate the unknown, paint a picture of the other, hard to do when there is a friendly face as a counterpoint.

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