oh, the uninformed...
Mac
posted about her mother's recent "scare" involving brown men and fishing nets. The "scare" was that some "Iraqis" were acting suspicious, near the Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant in Luzerne Co. PA (~300K people, 96.7% white). Read the full post for a very exasperating tale of just how crazy this all is. Mac, I agree: worry when there's reason to worry, and brown men with fishing nets is not a reason to worry.
Then there's my grandmother, who just happens to live a few counties over from Mac's mother, in Mifflin Co. PA (~47K people, 98.5% white). My grandmother was convinced that the group of brown men living in the house across the alley were terrorists. Her reasons? They were brown, they didn't speak English, there were four or five of them living in the one house together, and they drove a car without a license plate. After many stressful phone calls with my mother (who, thankfully, has a bit more sense than my grandmother), it was determined that these fellas where just living in town because they worked at the
chicken plant nearby, and this happened to be a cheap place to stay. My grandmother was more concerned about the chicken plant guys than the eight-people-to-a-house heroin dealers that also live nearby, because those folks are white and thus are not suspicious.
Now, my county of 1.6M people is "53.83% White, 2.80% Black or African American, 0.67% Native American, 25.56% Asian, 0.34% Pacific Islander, 12.13% from other races, and 4.66% from two or more races. 23.98% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race." (thanks,
wikipedia). At the nearby intersection, there are four gas stations. One is run by a Chinese family, one by a Vietnamese family, one by a group of Sikh men and one by a Mexican family. I think if my grandmother ever came to visit and had to gas up her car, she'd just drop dead from all that diversity.
