Pretentious Little Town

I live in a little college town on the West Coast of the US. The population is around 100,000, give or take. Lots of people in outlying areas, in-town population closer to 60, 000 to 80,000, I 'd guess. But the town has a homogenous, stuffy, small-town feel. I kid you not.

They pretend to be okay with everybody, but they really don't like outsiders; even if you're an outsider who's lived here 30 years. I know.

And I'll tell you what I mean.

One of the common proclamations here, when someone is having a fit and caught off their guard, is to talk about deporting someone or shipping them off to where they came from.

The sentiment is obvious. Some people belong here and some don't. If your background is somewhere from a distant country, well you certainly don't belong here.

In fact, this town is somewhat famous for having killed some and chased off the rest of a Chinese community that tried to settle here back in the 1800s. They really wanted to keep it all in the family. Kind of like Archie Bunker.

What you hear is a lot of rhetoric about care and love. On the one side, you have the conservative traditionalists, with the value they place on family things, and making families, and a yada yada. Then you have the liberals, who love freedom and equality and care and love. And then you have what they both are: Hypocrites.

They like their cliques, their divisions, their identities, the local celebrity. They like to tell you to work hard, no matter what it entails, they don't mind the homelessness and low-pay demeaning jobs. What they don't like is someone they can't control, someone who for all intents and purposes is an outsider.

So, they control the thought, talk, and action of the people here; with their pressure, looks, talk, alienation, and the list goes on. It seems subtle. Not sure it is.

I remember I moved away for awhile, to another town a few hundred miles away, which had a significant Latino and Asian population; I remember feeling the diversity and openness in the air. I walked into a situation and felt like they expected me, like I was an uncle coming to visit: The kids wanting to know what I thought they should do, the girls liking me, and no one thought I was suspect. There were other problems living in that town, but I miss those aspects of it that made me feel at home.

Not so in this town I am now living in; I've lived here, altogether, around 30 years, and the feeling has always been the same. Watch what you say, watch what you do, watch what you think: Because really you are just a visitor.