why does it bother you to live in an area that isn't a majority white Tipsy? That is wrong you should not give a rat what color your neighbors are.
You should not hate the multiculturalism you need to learn and benefit from it, it seems you did to some point but not quite as much as you should have. What you need to do is take the good stuff from the cultures, fashion that you like, food, customs, attitudes, etc...and grow from that. It improves the US by people doing that. It makes the culture stronger not weaker to do so.
I have never lived in an area that's majority white until now. Mostly the areas I grew up in were majority black. The difference is that multiculturalism has nothing to do with race, but CULTURE. Encouraged to keep immersed in one's own culture made it very difficult to get along with so many people from so many different cultures. It requires constant shifting to just not make someone mad at you. Not to mention instant evaluations as to what culture that person might belong to. When you meet someone, will you smile, or is that culture offended by showing teeth as a sign of dislike? Is it safe to shake hands, which hand is unclean? Do you remember? The woman wearing the dress covered with swastikas, what do you think about that? Did you notice they were reversed? Do you know that in the Indian culture this is the sign of happiness? Dozens of cultures with hundreds of social conventions. I had a Pakistani secretary once, and made a HORRIBLE mistake by hiring a secretary whose parents were from India. I was blinded by her qualifications. The two girls were close in age and became fast friends. UNTIL the Indian girls father announced that he was going to kill my Pakistani secretary because she was - from Pakistan! You don't know what war is until you try to mix Hindu and Muslim. I had to get a restraining order against him and tell him point blank that I didn't care what the law said, if he came by the office, I was going to kick his ass 7 ways from Sunday. Whose fault was that? MINE. I violated someone else's cultural beliefs. The poor Indian girl, who just wanted a job got beaten because her friend was a muslim Pakistani. It's exhausting and I didn't want to do it anymore. The only thing I can say is that at least I could do it! Not everyone can.
If it means anything to you. I can't adjust here either. This is rural, all white Nevada. My son told me I wouldn't be able to do it. I may not have liked the multiculturalism but that doesn't mean it's possible to live comfortably without it. I was told. He told me. When the nearest Indian restaurant is 200 miles away, there are NO Brazilian or Phillipino restaurants at all, you can't get a new sharwar-kameeze, there is no more Chinese art school, the cable station doesn't carry either your favorite Chinese historical serials, mexican novela OR the Japanese talent show you'll be SORRY you moved! There's no Korean community theater. I belonged to a troupe of Egyptian and Turkish style belly dancers. Fat chance of finding Egyptian and Turkish style belly dancing here. That's over. I can practice in the living room. I miss my dance classes. I miss the little performances.
He was right, I'm taking a job with a firm of Iranian lawyers who are themselves originally from England and moving back. Probably in a month. I've been back a few times already and have to go next week to apartment hunt. There are worse things than being exhausted from constant dealing with cultural differences, there's being bored. Ideally, the immigrants of today would have done what immigrants have always done, assimilate and become Americans. Put aside all those cultural mandates and prohibitions. They can't or won't and we no longer tell them to.
A friend of mine moved to Kansas several years ago, then moved her father to Kansas too. She was concerned that her Dad might be homesick. He said that California had changed so much, that it wasn't home to him anymore either. That's one of the things I thought of when I decided to move here. My error was in not realizing that as California changed, my friend's Dad did not. I did. I'm no longer capable of living in a single culture. I don't belong here. No matter how difficult it is, how tiring and in many cases distasteful, to live in a truly multicultural area, I still don't belong here.
Thank you for giving me this chance to vent.
