Apartheid and Old IU

[DavidDvorkin]

This is something that happened geological eras ago. Yesterday's election and the wonderful pictures and TV scenes of black people celebrating and crying made me think about it again.

I came to the U.S. from Apartheid-era South Africa as a teenager and went to high school in northern Indiana. That was in Elkhart, a medium-sized town that was somewhat rural and farm oriented but was nonetheless part of the Chicago-to-Detroit Great Lakes industrial region. The civil rights movement was boiling into the consciousness of America's whites, but I thought of segregation and race problems as being limited to that strange, alien world known as The South.

Later, I went to college at Indiana University in Bloomington, in southern Indiana. For quite a while, I didn't realize that, while the campus was culturally part of the North, when you stepped outside it, you were virtually halfway across the river into Kentucky.

The incident I'm remembering happened when I was a sophomore at IU, I think. So I was probably 19. That would have been about six years after I came to the U.S., and details about the Apartheid system were far fresher in my memory than they are now. A bunch of us were eating together in the dining hall. The group included one kid from some small town in southern Indiana. Somehow, the conversation turned to Apartheid, which was becoming an issue in America then, especially on college campuses. With a skeptical expression, small-town kid said to me, "It's not really as bad in South Africa for blacks as we hear, is it?"

So I launched into a long description of everything bad I could think of about Apartheid -- the restrictions, the pass system, the horribly inequitable application of laws, the poverty, the squalid living conditions, the privileges and immunities enjoyed by whites, and on and on. As I talked, his eyes widened and his mouth opened. I'm getting through to him! I thought. I felt proud of myself.

Finally I finished. He took a deep breath and said, "That sounds like paradise!"

[kenny blankenship]

1. I've heard rural Indiana described as "the southern-most point in the United States"

that was by a kid whose family had moved from Indiana.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. That's good

The South certainly extends up into states like Indiana, just as the North exists in urban pockets across the South.

[RainDog]

8. and I take issue again

"the north" is not synonymous with intelligence, a lack of racism, culture or erudition.

while I understand the shorthand or stereotyping you are trying to employ, it is sloppy thinking, at best.

The real point is "world view," a racist and xenophobic world view vs an open(ed) mind.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. Jeez. You're preaching to the choir.

My in-laws are Southerners -- educated, intellectual, liberal Southerners. I've spent a lot of time in the South and like many things about it.

I'm talking about a time when I was young, new to this country, and didn't know much about its different regions. I believe I said as much.

Chill.

[RainDog]

11. yeah, time changes things. hugs.

[salin]

13. And this election outcome in Indiana (for Obama) was only possible

due to two things: The repub margins in traditionally red/rural areas was lower in enough areas that the surge in the urban (and college town) areas was enough to switch a double digit percentage gain for Bush to a win to Obama.

Yes there are still knuckle draggers here in Indiana. However - the change in magnitude of bush win (%) in 2004 compared to an Obama win. Casual observers don't realize the magnitude of the shift from Bush in 04 to Obama - and that it is larger than just the traditionally dem areas going blue. It includes a heck of a lot of voters, district by district in the rural red counties (whose margers were slimmer in 08 compared to 04), changing their vote preference - this is what folks outside of this area don't get. This is not just about new voters, it is also about long time voters changing their top of the ticket vote - even if their locality went red - there were enough of these voters to join with blue area Obama votes to win.

There are thousdands of rural hoosiers who played a role in the IN win for Obama.

[elleng]

2. (((DavidD)))

.

[curse of greyface]

4. I have relatives in Capetown. My Uncle was a White socialist and ANC member..

Well during the peak of the protests in the eighties our high school decided to have an anti-apartheid march while
they were visiting. Needless to say they were excited but my one cousin was dismayed. He wondered why there were no blacks in the march? I(being an innocent and dumb teenager) explained that it was a town school and the town had no blacks... all the blacks lived two towns over.

We could visit it if he wanted.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Interesting!

Elkhart had a large black population, segregated in fact though of course not by law. There were black kids in my high school, and I was friendly with some of them, but despite having lived in South Africa, I was too naive to understand just how segregated the town was.

Both of my sisters lived in Capetown for a while, and one married a man from that city. My family visited there a few times. I remember it as a stunningly beautiful place. If we had stayed in S. Africa, I might well have moved there. Decades later, when I visited San Francisco, it reminded me of Capetown.

[RainDog]

6. I've lived in Bloomington for years now

I came here when my now ex took a position at IU. He's from northern Europe. While the area surrounding Bloomington is certainly rural and stupid-minded, the city of Bloomington is not.

There's a lot of mix between "town and gown" if you're not a student, tho, What you see from students coming in is still all over the place, in terms of their geography and world views.

Bloomington has elected greens to positions in the county govt and had a female mayor decades ago, and just recently had a Hispanic mayor. Just to note that the picture is not quite as you present it.

Like any other part of the United States, Ann Arbor, UT Knoxville, UT Austin, etc... large research Universities in smaller cities bring in people from all over the world who make (imo) a place a better and more interesting place to live. My kids got to go to elementary school with kids from 39 other nations. None of us would've ever been here without IU, but there are generations who live here who were transplants from around the world.

While I certainly have no doubt that your experience happened (and still does) it really misrepresents Bloomington.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. Remember that this was a long time ago

I was at I.U. in the early 1960s. Faculty members lived in town and were part of the town electorate, but the area in general, in those days, was rural and backward. Indianapolis was 60 miles and a world away; the road to it was a two-lane highway that wound through small towns.

So I'm talking about Bloomington and the area as it was then, not as it is now.

[RainDog]

10. The book, "Dissent in the Heartland" discusses the anti-war movement

in the area - that was surely centered on the IU Campus. Some of the more radicalized places in the U.S. during the anti-war movement were in the midwest (I'm not originally from the midwest, btw) - campuses in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and, famously, Ohio.

that was mid-sixties on, no doubt.

did you know that the Dali Lama's family lives here? There are two tibetan monasteries on two sides of the tibetan independence issue. His nephew is a realtor.

[DavidDvorkin]

12. I didn't know that about the Dalai Lama's family

When I was there, some of us were disappointed by the seeming cultural isolation of IU from the cultural ferment of the 60s. We read about what was happening in California, and it seemed very cool but also very distant. Some of my friends transferred to the University of Colorado in Boulder where, I was told, much of the cultural action was and it was a lot easier to get laid. As it happened, I ended up in Denver some years later and still live here. I have no information about the ease of getting laid in Boulder, compared to other college towns.

Not far from the campus, on Kirkwood (if I'm remembering the name of the street correctly), not far from Nick's English Hut, there was a house that was rumored to be the home of a bunch of actual hippies.

English and language majors liked Nick's English Hut for food and beer. Math and physics graduate students tended to prefer The Olde Regulator, but you were unwise to drink there late at night, because the clientele would shift from graduate students to cutters, and they viewed college students as fit targets for violence. And they were fitter than we were.

[RainDog]

16. I didn't arrive here until the late 1980s.

And so obviously my perception is skewed that way.

The Dali's Lama's bro. just passed away. He was a prof. in Uralic/Altaic languages.

We get lucky because the Dali Lama comes here from time to time and his American followers drop a lot of bling when they're here (yes, I'm being cynical.)

But I've also had the chance to see monks create a mandala (at a church on Kirkwood Ave.) and go through the final ceremony in which they disperse it.

Nick's is still in existence. When Will Pitt was here a few years ago Salin made sure we could all meet up there. Don't know about the other place.

Bloomington also has a world music fest every fall (end of sept/first of oct.) called The Lotus Music Fest. Lots of great music. tickets have gotten pretty expensive (going on its 16th year) but they have open venues too - so people can still hear even if they're not drinking beer under a tent cover.

believe it or not, I am not connected with the city in any way... but I have met so many interesting people here, I had to give Bloomington some props. ;)

[salin]

14. The change in Bloomington between 1960 and 1972 is mindblowing.

I grew up in B-ton in the late sixties/early seventies. The reality I knew was a dem. mayor (later congressman) who integrated (racially and by gender) the police department and the fire department to great resistance. What I "know" was post civil rights movement. It wasn't until I worked with an African American woman in another part of the country who attended IU in the early sixties, and described extreme segregation, that I realized how much the city had changed in a single decade: she related an incident where she was studying with friends off campus in the apartment of a white student - and a call was made to that resident by a university official to instruct that it was not appropriate for the black student to be there and that she should go to her own residence. I have come to understand while the Bloomington you describe does not match that which I remember growing up in (in the seventies) it is congruent with students' experiences in the early 60s, and was reconfirmed by my parents (white - but very active in the effort to desegregate the city in the eary/mid sixties).

What is interesting to me is the rapid speed (relative to history) with which the city moved to progressivism. In slightly more than a decade, the Bloomington described in the OP (which I have heard described per that time frame from a number of folks) shifted. How many more communities shifted in that time - and how many more will shift in this era?

Yes we Can!

An aside - while I am signing off for the evening a big hello to raindog, even if our paths don't cross timewise. :hi: and :hug:

[DavidDvorkin]

15. Mindblowing and good to know about

I left in the spring of 1967. I had intended to stay longer, and now I wish I had been able to.

[RainDog]

18. hi girly girl

:hug:

I'm still... happily shocked that Indiana went blue!!! I knew Indy, Bloomington, Chicago area were in the bag, but had no idea how McCain/Palin was playing. I hope the big libertarian influence helped to at least pull some away from Republicans.

I noted on another thread - I don't know if you heard Daniels' speech - but he was repeating "Obama" talking points - as far as the way of politics - empowering new generation, no dirty campaign (don't know if this is true or not) - I think he's aligning himself with the "mainline" Republicans (McCain) and not with the populists (Palin.) But Pence won again, and so did Burton.

I'm just so excited to have a president from the midwest! This is the first time since Kennedy that the dem. prez hasn't been from the south.

And for all the defense I've made on this thread, I'm happy the prez isn't a southerner!!!!! (speaking as someone from the south, fwiw.)

[Indenturedebtor]

17. Actually much of Bloomington is just as one would expect of a small insular town

there truly are two Bloomingtons, just as there are two NYC's. There are stupid racist idiots of every color, creed, and religion in every town all over the world.

Hell folks, California just banned gay marriage last night :(