Mason-Dixon Whines

My son, who is studying sociology, was discussing with me how prejudices become so lodged in society that over many generations they become part of the cultural DNA.  This thinking is normally applied to our ancestors' abhorrent behavior towards certain minorities, but it made me consider whether there are other outward manifestations of this phenomenon.  We have made several dramatic relocations in the last thirty years, having begun our relationship in the northeast then moved to San Francisco, then Atlanta, and then back again to New England.  With this interesting perspective we began to realize how, and perhaps why, our interactions with people in each of our ‘homes’ were so very different.

Moving to San Francisco took very little adjustment for us.  People were welcoming to strangers and open to us as individuals.   We mixed and mingled with people from every conceivable backround; ethnicity and religious affiliation were rarely an issue.  The cultural ethos was very much akin to the fusion style of California Cuisine:  anything goes.   I remember meeting a particular woman at a healthcare executive networking meeting, herself a transplant from the East many years before.  I was still sad about moving across the country, leaving my friends and my life behind.  She touched me gently on the shoulder, saying, “Now, you have a friend!”  I know she follows this blog.  I hope she recognizes herself in this story so she knows how much that one gesture of unconditional acceptance and friendship continues to mean to me. 

A funny quirk that we discovered in San Francisco was the inability on the part of many people to give a direct answer to a direct question--especially yes or no.  One Thanksgiving weekend we planned to drive north over the Siskiyou pass to visit my husband’s family in Oregon.  It was important to determine in advance whether chains would be required.  I made a phone call to the DOT to ask this very specific question.  The person spoke in circles for ten minutes about roads, weather, plowing, what happened in years past.  Frustrated, I said, “Sorry to cut you off.  I just need to know—yes or no—are chains required on the pass or not?”  This was not unusual.  It was just as likely that a store clerk could not say the word ‘no’ when you asked for kitty litter, or that someone could not say ‘no’ when you asked for directions to your destination.  This behavior became so predictable that we tended to find these encounter amusing rather than annoying.

Perhaps our move to the deep South would have been less jarring had it not been preceded by our glory years in San Francisco.  The earthquake, however, (see posting from 1/5/12: The Yellow Tag List) was enough to shake us loose; otherwise we might have stayed in California for many years.

Atlanta was a big challenge to our liberal attitudes toward equality and inclusiveness.  It did not hit us right away, as we chose to live in an in-town neighborhood close to Emory University.  We loved its quirky cafes and family-run restaurants, the ability to stroll with the children on weekends to a nearby bakery or ice cream shop, and the interesting mix of people who made up our close friends.  I soon discovered, however, that I had made a provocative choice by settling in this charming historic neighborhood.   Several people at work bristled at my response when they asked where we were living.  Some mentioned defiantly that they chose to live “where MARTA did not run.”  Others simply preferred to send their children to schools where “everyone looked like them.” There were members of my department who refused to bring their families to parties at my house.  I was assuaged in my choice by the knowledge that such bone-headed people would never be my neighbors. 

My company, unlike my home, was located in the “great, white North”—the suburbs north of Atlanta where one finds such luminaries as Newt Gingrich.  Although the work was very satisfying, the behaviors and attitudes of some of the people baffled me.   Apparently, it is common in the South to display your “labels” in full view.  Your religious and political affiliations are made outwardly clear; if not, they are sought and outed by others.  With a decided lack of “people of color” employed in our corporate headquarters, I seemed to represent the fringe element.  My reputation as [choose your label: female, Jewish, ivy leaguer, city dweller, or all of the above] made me the subject of outward speculation and sometimes derision.  People assumed that because I was educated in Boston I was a “Yankee” (is that a crime?), which made me suspect.  For the record, I was born in rural central Florida; my first language was Southern—but this did not matter.   The common knowledge (and why was this common knowledge?) that I am a Jew caused people I did not know to seek me out in my office in order to get my take on the movie Schindler’s List "on behalf of the Jews."  On a few occasions, I was detained in offices by people who felt it was their responsibility to save me, right then and there.

Pollsters who have difficulty understanding why Newt Gingrich prevailed so surprisingly over Mitt Romney in this week’s South Carolina primary neglected to consider the embedded value system endemic across the South.  After generations of drawing a line between “us” and “them”, there is a cultural tendency to take the measure of a man (or woman) according to how and how much they overlap with one’s own beliefs or culture.   Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney each have a variety of strengths and virtues, but one thing Mitt Romney will never be is Southern.

After living in Atlanta, we returned to New England.  As home-owners with school-aged children we began to see a very different side of life in Boston than we did as unencumbered students.  The issues that were social touch-points in the South were gone, but we discovered that New Englanders had their own brand of embedded cultural values.  I began to see it more clearly when I re-read the Scarlet Letter with my kids.  I had forgotten that Hawthorne framed the story with a contemporary point of view, narrated by a customs house worker who took a critical look back at the rigid, unrelenting community standards of the Puritans—the same people who took it upon themselves to declare as witches those who possessed any outward form of individualism.  With this story resonating, I began to reinterpret the local traditions and social norms that I was encountering, realizing that the Puritan traditions, though to a much lesser extreme, were very much embedded in the present day . 

I had a very bizarre experience along these lines that disturbs me still.  Some years ago I was prescribed a medication that required periodic blood tests.  The doctor set a standing order at the lab so that I could get these tests with little inconvenience.  I had been doing this regularly for more than a year when one day there was no order when I arrived.  I asked them to call upstairs to the doctor’s office, convinced it was an oversight that was easily remedied.  Two hours went by as I waited patiently to have the order reinstated.   The lab manager kept calling to speak to the physician’s office manager, but there was no order and no explanation.

Since I was required to fast for these tests, after a couple of hours my patience dissolved into impatience.  I headed upstairs, thinking that it would be easier to resolve matters face to face.  There, I explained that I had been waiting several hours in the lab for their office to put through a lab order.  The office manager came out to the waiting room and scolded me: “What makes you think you can just demand blood test?”  I explained that the doctor ordered it, and that there was supposed to be a standing order on file downstairs.   I also mentioned, quite emphatically, that since it was now 11am and I had not eaten (having checked in at 8am), that I would appreciate it if we could do this quickly.  But for some reason she was fixated on what she perceived as my audacity for ordering my own test.  I asked to see the doctor—my doctor, any doctor—but as gatekeeper she simply cut off all access: “I am not going to let you see anyone.”  She then took out my medical record and proceeded to write all sorts of notes in it, to justify, I suppose, why she was endangering my health.  I felt like a school girl in the principal’s office being written up for bad behavior.   This caused me to lose my cool; I was angry, I was hungry, I was dizzy, there were tears streaming involuntarily down my cheeks.  She looked up at me and said, “I don’t like you.  I am not going to do anything for you.  You cannot walk in here and order your own tests.”

This extreme example is one of several times when emotion—whether sadness, frustration, exhilaration, anger, pride, fear—received a strangely unsympathetic response.   I have been scorned for limping from a knee injury, disparaged for using a wheelchair after Achilles tendon surgery, and ridiculed for passing out in public.  Over the years I’ve learned not to cheer for my children, not to cry in physical or emotional pain, and not to laugh out loud.  The embedded cultural standard in New England is a stiff upper lip.  An action that gets noticed or does not conform is perceived as calling attention to one’s self, which is social taboo that can result in exclusion. 

These observations are just an intellectual diversion; it is important to note how much we enjoyed living in each of these cities.  In the end, we have always found our own “tribe”—a group of like-minded and open-minded people with whom we have been able to share hockey games, holidays, restaurants, plays, or just the occasional cold beer.  As we moved from place to place, our family of friends was fortified by the old and enhanced by the new.  From all of you, we only get richer.

Tomorrow's blog:  Outcome Measures for the State of the Union Address