As I was driving Alfredo, Reyna, Lourdes, and Tu out of Hattiesburg, MS, I told them that I should drive carefully: I'd get accused of smuggling aliens if I got pulled over. I have a very Italian name, and I assumed that a MS sheriff would have found that the circumstances warranted a phone call to the feds. (My four colleagues, by the way, are all US citizens.)
Still, I could not help thinking throughout my time in Hattiesburg--a small college town in SE Mississippi--how odd it was to be attending an immigration law training there. Wherever I went with my Latino and Chinese colleagues, I wondered what the Hattiesburgers would make of us.
However, I think that I was more conscious of our multiculturalism than anyone else. With regard to my colleagues, being a minority and generating reactions from the majority has probably become familiar, literally everyday for them.
What struck me was the fact that we didn't appear to generate any reaction from the Hattiesburgers. They seemed altogether indifferent to our crew's ethnic makeup. And as I saw more of Hattiesburg, I was reminded that it is a small world after all. Our last lunch, in fact, was at a sushi restaurant (This blew my mind, since we didn't have sushi in Jackson in 1987.). And, though not present in the same numbers as in New Orleans, San Francisco, and Tampa, there were more colors than just black and white. Hattiesburg was ready for the likes of us.
And this blog entry is leading me to the embarrassing conclusion that I, and not Hattiesburg, have displayed the provincial mindset. I bet that that hypothetical MS sheriff probably would have just given me a ticket, told me to slow down, and sent me on my way.
2 comments:
OMG!!! You went to the 'burg! Actually, most of those various ethnic faces are probably transplants from the coast and NOLA. When I was in the 'burg in 03-04, it was a fairly typical Mississippi town. And if you'd met the sheriff or the police chief in the 'burg, you could've dropped my name. :) They used to be my beat.
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