Since I agree with them, maybe you should take it out on me???
Anyway, did anyone listen to NPR's show today on a small town that was taken over by Mexican immigrants? I'll have to check their website to find the story.
But basically, it was the same reaction as to Mormons (or anyone else) coming in large numbers and basically supplanting whoever was living there before.
So, it wasn't personal. It's just small town America and xenophobia at it's best...
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Irami seems not to have seen my comment about the conference center. While its use is controlled by the church, they regularly have cultural events free of charge. Though it can be tricky to get a ticket. Attached to the main auditorium is a 1,000 seat "little theater" where they have charged for admission.
Bob- Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 (while being incarcerated at Carthage Jail). He was being incarcerated for destroying a printing press. The printing press was publicizing a lewd expose of polygamy- hence polygamy was not widely known at the time.
As others have said, Smith's legal wife Emma only knew of two of his many marriages, and she later declined that anything of the sort ever happened. Now that I think of it, I don't know if Smith fathered any children with anyone besides his legal wife, so if not, that would support her view of things. The "rules of polygamy" underwent an evolution. I don't really know how it went, but OSC's book Saints is one view of how it could have worked.
At the time Smith was killed, polygamy was still a rumor. It was mainly this paranoia over population shifts and government control that motivated a mob to attack the jail where he was being held, killing him and his brother, and wounding the author of the quote I referred to for Dagonee.
After his death, things were quiet for a time, and then in the winter of 1846 (18 months later) mobs moved to expel the Mormons. Whether they chose to drive them out in deadly cold for spite or because that's when people weren't busy farming, the fact is hundreds died who probably wouldn't have otherwise. Not everyone did leave. Emma stayed. Agents of the church were appointed to stay and sell what they could, generally for pennies on the dollar.
So the death of Joseph Smith was mainly political. The later expulsion of the Mormons probably did have more to do with the rumors of polygamy.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The problem seems to occur when the people who move in are perceived not as a number of individuals, but as a block, a "them", as opposed to "us". What is it that makes that happen? Is it any time the individuals share a language or culture or religion or any physical characteristic that is 1) not a majority group and 2) not one's own?
"All these blondes are taking over our town! If we brunettes want to have anything left we are going to have to fight for what's ours!" Not quite it. Being blonde is not in the majority, but it's considered a good thing in our culture. So this one can't happen.
Yet I can picture it being said about old people, or college age kids, of course (that was a big issue in my college town - for good reason), or mentally ill people or disabled people or deaf people or people of any ethnicity that isn't Northern European, or any religion that isn't Protestant Christianity. (Here in the U.S. I mean.)
If we could analyze this situation and understand what it would take to make it right, we could fix about 9/10ths of the wars and organized violence in the world. That would be a really good thing.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:"All these blondes are taking over our town! If we brunettes want to have anything left we are going to have to fight for what's ours!" Not quite it. Being blonde is not in the majority, but it's considered a good thing in our culture. So this one can't happen.
I think that the real issue is that there is no perception that blondes have a different set of values and desires than the rest of the population.
I think that animosity towards a group is generally centered on the belief that members of that group have values that are not only different from "our values" but which we see as being in direct conflict with "our values".
In order to resolve this problem, we somehow need to increase peoples understanding that we are all human. Despite our culture or our religion, our basic human needs and values are largely the same. We all need food, clothing, transportation, shelter, dignity and love. We all desire time to play, time to think, and time to grow. We all love our children and want the best for them. We all appreciate fresh air and good health. We have far more in common than we believe.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
St. John's was not established by a religion. Wheeling Jesuit is a religious school not a secular school started by a religion. Part of Wheeling's purpose is to develop spirituality.
Its not that kind of "funk", Irami . I have known some Funks in various places also but my member name uses no part of my actual name.
I lived in a community that WAS overrun by elderly retirees. They came down for the winter months and a portion of them stayed year round. They had a chilling impact on our schools, I'd have to say. Being on a fixed income, I can understand that they aren't inclined to vote for increased property taxes to pay for education programs, but frankly it gets a bit old. When a sizable portion of the population is from a group that resists change, it's a problem no matter what, as far as I'm concerned.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, Bob, I was thinking of the college students, too, who lived next door to me in a wonderful old house that had been split up for apartments. They kept the bad music on 10 until 3 am on week nights, and left their empty beer cans, and the regurgitated contents of those cans all over the porch and yard. <shudders> I suppose it's not right to generalize from those particular kids to all college students, but after a few neighbors like that, I can certainly understand why the townies would want to ban students from their neighborhoods.
I guess there are always real issues, too, that get mixed up in the "us" and "them" stuff.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Actually, there's a great Social Psychology theory that basically says that people actively gauge whether they can "mask" their prejudices before they act on them. Avoidance of the Handicapped was the seminal study in this a few years ago. Basically, if you put a wheel-chair bound person in a room with seats all around, and just loaded up the room with different numbers of "confederates" (non-handicapped people in the employ of the researcher). Then you send in the test subject and see where they sat. If it was down to two seats, one next to the handicapped person and one further away, then people would actually act against their prejudice and overwhelmingly take the seat near the handicapped person.
If, however, there were lots of seats and their choice would appear more or less "random" then people NEVER sat near the handicapped person.
It was actually pretty clever stuff as Social Psych experiments go.
The relevance, though, to overgeneralize in the extreme, is that if you have "issues" that make it look like you are just being a "concerned citizen" as opposed to a bigot, people will feel more comfortable acting out their prejudices -- avoiding the handicapped or making things uncomfortable for the outsiders. At least it'll work that way in the absence of open hostilities between the parties. Once things get that bad, all bets are off.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
. I have known some Funks in various places also but my member name uses no part of my actual name.
