Posted on 09/09/2005 2:35:47 PM PDT by RWR8189
CAMP WILLIAMS, Utah (Reuters) - Asked whether he would relocate permanently to Utah after being brought here as a refugee from Hurricane Katrina, Larry Andrew rattled off a series of questions on Friday on the delicate issue of race.
"How do the adults really feel about us moving in?" he asked at Camp Williams, a military base 21 miles south of Salt Lake City housing about 400 refugees from last weeks disaster. "What if I find a Caucasian girl and decide to date her?
"Will I have to deal with whispering behind me and eyeballing me?" asked the 36-year-old black man.
For the mostly poor, black refugees evacuated from New Orleans, few places are as geographically remote and culturally alien as this corner of Utah, where 0.2 percent of the population in the nearest town is black.
Still, some refugees, especially younger adults, say they are ready to make a new start in the region even though they did not know they were coming until the doors shut on the airplane evacuating them from New Orleans.
"I'm planning a whole new life," said Phillip Johnson II, 23, who has already arranged an apartment in Salt Lake City. "It's an opportunity knocking for me out here."
He said even though the population of New Orleans was two-thirds black, his appearance with dreadlocks and a goatee still worked against him. "In New Orleans, being a young black man, you get harassed a lot, stereotyped a lot," he said.
One of the volunteers at the base, Newton Gborway, who moved to Utah from Liberia in West Africa five years ago, shared his first-hand impression of life in an economically prosperous state with a less than one percent black population.
"Don't be shocked and surprised if you meet someone who is mean to you or doesn't want to associate with you because you are black," he told Darisn Evans. "You don't worry about the negative stuff."
"Everything is going to be okay, but it is just a matter of time."
Evans said he would remain in Utah, and would like to work either as a handyman or as a highway patrolman.
His ex-wife Tanya Andrews, 44, said race played a part in their escape from flooded New Orleans, an adventure which she said included looting food, a television and a boat to get to higher land. She said rescuers picked them up only after a lighter-skinned black woman waved down a helicopter.
UTAH OPEN ARMS
So far the local community has welcomed the refugees with open arms, although they say they face an adjustment to life in Utah, stronghold of the socially conservative Mormon Church.
"Any time you go in where you are in the minority -- and I'm experienced in this -- it's going to be more difficult," said Wayne Mortimer, mayor of Bluffdale next to Camp Williams.
He cited his past missionary work in Canada when he was a relatively rare Mormon. Mortimer said his town of 6,500, a well-to-do bedroom community of Salt Lake City, had 20 low-income housing units available for the refugees.
"When you are an affluent community like we have, the greatest blessing we can have is to lift someone else," he said in an interview.
Larry Andrew's brother Adrian and sister Tanya, despite initial shock about being sent to Utah, say they will remain in Utah. Even Larry, despite his doubts, says the state is offering him a unique chance.
"According to what I see, it will be beneficial to me economically, even socially," he said. "But how would they adapt to me?"
Thanks :-)
Jeez. You can't win with these people, can you?
Yes, but I get it from both directions. Freeping Mormons; Freeping Freepers. Pun intended. Everybody laugh now. Flaming not required.
They had to take phones off the hook because so many people wanted to help.
People have gone out of their way to find housing and jobs for them.
It was a wonderful response.
both, but more by blacks, I suspect. The black power elite in NO that has risen to control has been lightskinned black and middle class or better since the early 1800s...
He would also be surprised at how many interracial couples there are in Utah...in Ogden and Salt Lake. Probably more common here per capita than back in NO...
If they come to Utah expecting to find racists itching to oppress them, that's what they'll find. Even if there aren't any. For this group of professional victims racism is the handy excuse for every ill or annoyance that afflicts them day to day. It enables them to find comfort in their victimhood and to avoid the harder work of facing up to their own failures, lack of initiative, and--sometimes--just plain bad luck, and overcoming them.
Maybe he can understand how the whites in the Superdome felt.
I grew up in south Alabama. I dated a black girl for awhile in high school. While it wasn't exactly encouraged by either of our folks, it wasn't forbidden either. Anyways, I ran into this girl when I was visiting my old city a couple of years ago. She was driving a big wheeled, camouflaged pick-up truck with a gun rack. Turns out she married a guy I had been acquainted with; a fellow who looks, talks, and acts like every liberal's mental stereotype of a racist redneck- LOL! I'm sure they may get some looks, but they're perfectly safe where they are.
"Will I have to deal with whispering behind me and eyeballing me?" asked the 36-year-old black man.
Please explain to me, larry: why would anybody want you anywhere?
"According to what I see, it will be beneficial to me economically, even socially," he said. "But how would they adapt to me?"
Yeah, right. You move somewhere and expect the residents to have to adapt to you, huh? Absolutely typical (and, unfortunately, stereotypical).
Thanks for the great reply. I guess I got lucky- it's a non-issue with my family and my in-laws. All of my siblings married people of different races. We could bring anyone home.
Yeah, it's just sad whenever you're rejected. Funny, when I lived in Philly, there were two white kids going to my school and I used to feel sorry for them. The black kids treated them horribly.
Yeah, it's just sad whenever you're rejected. Funny, when I lived in Philly, there were two white kids going to my school and I used to feel sorry for them. The black kids treated them horribly.
I dare the MSM to ask the same question about an enclave of refugees in Philadelphia/Chicago/D.C./Detroit/L.A./ New York.
Here's one example of a black racist: a black guy hit my husband, while he was holding our baby boy, because he didn't like seeing a white man with a black woman. He was threatened when we were in Dallas. I stay away from certain neighborhoods because I don't want my son to be hurt.
The LDS church never taught that. The doctrine was that the priesthood was not to be conferred upon blacks of African descent. The restriction was always considered temporary, could be ignored by special dispensation, and was lifted in general practice by revelation in 1978.
There was a great deal of speculation regarding the whys and wherefores, which critics of the LDS church have spared no expense in digging up and going over.
Because LDS doctrine also teaches that there is a time spent in the afterlife prior to final judgement, temporary restrictions of salvific blessings in mortality do not automatically translate into damnation in the eternities.
Some interesting reading on the subject.
Racism and insistence not only on the opportunity but guaranteed outcomes too ... will it never end?
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