I was reading the local mail chatlist when once again the discussion started about "us versus them" in regards to the "natives" of Chatham County and the "transplants" who have moved in here over the last several years or even decades. The main target of my ire was Rita with the Hyphenated Name, who's basic argument was "Shut up, if you don't like it, go back where you came from" which has been a pervasive ideology across the south since Reconstruction. I decided to reply to her post, and every other post on the topic, and this is my reply:
I wanted to thank Rita with the hyphenated last name and the others who've jumped in to once again add fuel to the us/them argument. And I wanted to thank all those locals for once again reminding me in the most polite of terms that I am not "native", will never be "native", should not consider myself a "local", and should just smile and keep my mouth shut because being an "outsider" means that I don't have the right to want, work for, hope for, or embrace changes that could make my life better.
I'd like to introduce a term, and I don't see why we can't all use it. The term is gaijin. It's a Japanese term that means "outsider" or "foreigner" or more appropriately "non-Japanese" and that is pretty apropos here. After all, if we weren't born here, then we are all gaijin.
The reason I mention this is that the so very polite explanation that I should just shut the heck up or move back to [insert location of origin here] reminds me a lot of an experience my dad had once in Japan. My dad has never had the resources to travel much. Sure, we traveled when I was a kid, all over the south, where I grew up, and even across the country a time or two, but never out of the U.S. So when the chance came for him to spend 4 weeks in Japan being trained as part of his job for Yokohama Tire, he eagerly packed his bags and jumped on the plane.
He saw a lot of wonderful things in Japan, just as I see many wonderful things here in Chatham County every day. He had some fabulous food in many restaurants there, just as I dine here at Elois', various BBQ places, Rufus' and the GSC. He shopped there, buying gifts for us kids, and my mom, and everyone else in the family, just as I often buy gifts for my family here in Chatham.
So my dad was out wandering one day, taking in the sights and sounds and experiences and decided it was time to get something to eat. He looked around a bit and finally chose to enter a small bake shop to get some fresh baked goodies. Behind the counter was an elderly woman, a local, a native, if you will. He tried several times to order something to eat, only to be met each time with "Oh, so sorry... so sorry" with a disarmingly polite smile.
Finally, the little old woman told my father "So sorry, you can't be here. You go down street" all the while smiling and being so very polite. The store was for Japanese only. No gaijin allowed. There are many ancient villages and towns across rural Japan, and in most cases, while the people are almost obscenely polite, there exists a veiled, yet polite bigotry among the "natives" against the gaijin.
I bring this up to illustrate the point. The population of Chatham County is not stagnant. It is very fluid, and these days, it's growing almost exponentially to its growth in the previous hundred years or more. I read the chatlist every day, and when these discussions pop up I cringe in the thinly veiled bigotry displayed by the "locals" who are "native" to Chatham county.
Ordinarily, I find this amusing, but the point is, no one here is truly a "native". Those of you who can claim that your family was here in the very beginning, way back when, should remember that your family got that land from the true Natives. You are just as gaijin as I am, whether you care to admit that to yourselves or not. You've just lived here a bit longer.
Another point to make... there have always been gaijin in Chatham County. Were it not for the people who move into the county from other places, you'd most certainly be married to your own relatives. Without a shift in population from external gene pools, the only other option is inbreeding, or not breeding, and in either of those cases, eventually the existing population dies out and a new one moves in. That's just nature working as it is supposed to.
So whether or not you are "local" or "native" or whatever label you need to give yourself to differentiate yourself from those of us who haven't lived here for the last 50 years, you are still made up of gaijin. I've been gaijin my entire life, so this is nothing new to me. That doesn't make the thinly veiled polite bigotry any more palatable, however...
Going back on last time to the beginning of my post, I wonder if Rita with the Hyphenated Name realizes that the hyphenated surname is a gaijin custom. It's European, and most certainly NOT an antiquated Southern Tradition where the family structure is predominately patriarchal. In fact, the popularity of the hyphenated last name in the US is very attributable to the feminism movement and their need to break the centuries old custom of the woman always taking the husbands last name and dropping hers. In any case, the practice of hyphenating the last name is certainly not "local" nor is it "native" to Chatham County, and I'd wager that it is only very recently begun to become even remotely common among the surnames in the area.
Das Aggregator!