[BRIEF NOTE] Followup on Campbellford
Nov. 4th, 2010 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI thought I'd like to make a followup to yesterday's post about that winning KKK/slave small Ontario town's Legion. My thansk to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ruralrob, who pointed out in the comments to that thread that, as soon as the news of this pair's winning first prize got outside of the Legion hall, the general reaction was starkly negative: the Legion itself got suspended; hundreds of phone calls of protest came in; the man dressed in the KKK uniform now calls it a stupid mistake, apparently facing not a small amount of anger and disbelief from his fellows and saying that he might leave town if things get worse. Good.
Part of my reaction to this comes from my background on Prince Edward Island, where attitudes of this kind hid behind the appearance of normality, an idyllic one, even. If things are fine, or at least fine enough, why this? Where does it come from? I suppose it could come, for me, down to a suspicion of façades, the things that people know and tell in all sincerity but which could be disproven by a single absurd act. Like a firebomb, say. Firebombers on the Island are a thankfully small minority, as are people in rural Ontario who think that people dressed up in the KKK takign people in blackface along are. The true test of a community--any community--is the way it reacts to the eruption of this absurdity, and the unconscious attitudes that this represents. So far, both communities seem to be doing well enough.
ruralrob, who pointed out in the comments to that thread that, as soon as the news of this pair's winning first prize got outside of the Legion hall, the general reaction was starkly negative: the Legion itself got suspended; hundreds of phone calls of protest came in; the man dressed in the KKK uniform now calls it a stupid mistake, apparently facing not a small amount of anger and disbelief from his fellows and saying that he might leave town if things get worse. Good.Part of my reaction to this comes from my background on Prince Edward Island, where attitudes of this kind hid behind the appearance of normality, an idyllic one, even. If things are fine, or at least fine enough, why this? Where does it come from? I suppose it could come, for me, down to a suspicion of façades, the things that people know and tell in all sincerity but which could be disproven by a single absurd act. Like a firebomb, say. Firebombers on the Island are a thankfully small minority, as are people in rural Ontario who think that people dressed up in the KKK takign people in blackface along are. The true test of a community--any community--is the way it reacts to the eruption of this absurdity, and the unconscious attitudes that this represents. So far, both communities seem to be doing well enough.
