[Wayne Harvey]

As I grew up in the rural South, I thought that people everywhere else must be more open-minded, less provincial, and more sophisticated than we were. I was wrong! I lived in Connecticut for four years when I finished college. I loved the place and the people that I got to know. I never got to know many of the people I saw regularly, however, because they were close-minded and unwilling to get to know outsiders. People in Connecticut asked my wife and me some ‘stupid’ questions: Do you have electricity down South? Does the South have multi-lane highways? Do you still beat blacks? Does everybody live on the beach in Florida? Because I knew the people who asked these questions, I realized that they didn’t ask from arrogance or enmity but from simple ignorance. They didn’t know because they had never visited the South and didn’t know anyone from the South. The reaction you received in the South is most likely similar to that some Southerners have received in the North. People have mental images of people who are different from them and, until those images are burst, those false images determine their attitude and how they interact. I’ve found that one of the best ways to react to such prejudice, malicious or not, is to be oneself and give ignorant people an opportunity to learn who you are and that, after all, you aren’t so bad. It worked for me. When I left Connecticut to return to Florida, my wife and I had good friends of different colors and nationalities and who knew much more about the South than they did before we met them.

User Detail :  

Name : Wayne Harvey, Gender : M, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Baptist, Age : 56, City : LaCrosse, State : FL, Country : United States, Occupation : minister, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

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