Dirty Little Subject

I was thinking about prejudice for some reason and how different it is regionally. When I was growing up in North Carolina I heard a lot of weird things. I do want to point out that none of these things were said by my parents who were very progressive for their time.

Creepy things I heard as a child:
1) Black people are all lazy, live in government housing, and use their welfare money to buy fancy cadillacs. (And this went with "If you vote for a democrat, they will take your hard-earned tax dollars and spend it on lazy black people" and this is still the common ideology of the south.)
2) The Jews killed Jesus
3) Catholics don't worship God or Jesus, they worship Mary.

So it was odd when I moved to Texas in my senior year of high school and everyone was using the word "wetback" in the same tone I heard another word used in North Carolina. I must have heard 50 "wetback" jokes involving swimming before I finally asked someone what a "wetback" was. And I never heard the "N word" here. It never came up.

In May of 1983, my brother left California to come to Texas to live with me and get over his divorce. He had been in California for 4 or 5 years. His common belittlement "joking" involved Mormons. I had never heard a Mormon joke in my life. He was constantly saying, "I hate those fucking Mormons!"

When I was married to my second husband, his sister from Prince George, B.C., had non-stop stories to tell about how horrible Asian people were.

So what I'm wondering about all this is: Is bigotry based on something so simple as proximity? And if so, isn't this a problem that dates back throughout the known history of mankind? Oh, wait! That sounds like I am excusing it. Just the opposite. My thinking is, if this is a base behavior that is thousands and thousands of years old, why haven't we learned anything? Why do we fear being near people who look/think/believe differently than we do?

And because of current politics, many Americans hate the French, but the French have a great saying, "Viva le difference!" I've used that expression all my life. Maybe the French know what they're doing.

And seriously, someone would have to hold a gun to my head to make me place an order for "freedom fries."