By Tom Dodge, KERA 90.1 Commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-547168.mp3
Dallas, TX –
When my great-grandparents and their four children came to Texas in a covered wagon from Tennessee, Grandma Conner was pregnant. They must have been a scruffy bunch when they settled in Farmers Branch, where my grandfather was born in 1894. They were American citizens but had no proof of this. None of them even had a birth certificate. My great-grandfather could not read or write English, or any language, for that matter. They were poor migrant farm workers looking for a better life. Since there was no problem with overcrowding in Texas in those days, no language barrier, no competition between them for jobs and services, not even an income tax, the few people who had already settled there showed no enmity toward them.
My grandfather said the only thing he remembered about the area was that it was wide-open prairie as far as you could see in all directions and it took all day to get to the State Fair in a wagon. Now, with overcrowding, language barriers, competition for jobs and services, and an income tax all a fact of life in our country, cohesive groups are becoming more and more threatened by strangers. I myself, have complained of unfair taxes, declining services, and erosion of the infrastructure, the worst for me being the raging traffic.
Governments are historically unable or unwilling to prevent the social strife and fear that accompany influxing. In fact, governments encourage the fears, I think, in order to raise and maintain armies. They promote them by actively teaching nationalism and regionalism in schools. Billy Oxsheer, a retired fsocial science professor, explains it as "ethnocentrism." We're taught that who we are, where we are, and what we believe, is the best there is, much better than those over there, in that other town, that other neighborhood, that other school, that other belief, that other country.
Like other governments, democracies are adept at promoting ethnocentrism. Our own system of government is derived from the Greeks of the fifth century BC. It was the Greeks who coined the word, "xenophobia," fear of outsiders. They also gave us the word, "barbarian," meaning anyone not speaking Greek. This word, "barbaros," echoes the baaing of sheep, which Greeks thought other languages sounded like. Those Greeks were hard dudes.
This tendency of humans to form cohesive groups and fear outsiders is a familiar theme in literature and in the Bible. Jesus showed the wrong of this behavior in his "The Good Samaritan" parable. Many American novels focus on the rancor that exists between cohesive groups in novels like "Shane," "The Grapes of Wrath," and "Sayonara." This divisiveness is overcome when, as in "Shane," a charismatic leader stands with the newcomers against the majority. Or, as in "The Grapes of Wrath," when economic necessity overrides prejudice and the newcomers, due to their skills, assimilate into the group. Or, as in "Sayonara," when individuals within the groups intermarry, demonstrating that age-old truth, love conquers all.
As for my family, they left Farmers Branch around the turn of the twentieth century, and settled in Johnson County, where Grandpa Conner gave up the life of the itinerant farmer and raised livestock. He even served as a member of the board of trustees at Caddo school. His descendents became educated, owned property and paid taxes, served in the military and, as it is the American Way, became part of the cohesive group.
Tom Dodge is a writer from Midlothian.
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