How does the offer of cash and free land sound to you? All that you have to do is live in a small town in North Dakota. Sounds good? Maybe not. Here's the story of Michael Tristani and his family:
Tired of crime, traffic, hurricanes and the high cost of living in Florida, the Tristanis moved four years ago to Hazelton, a dwindling town of about 240 that has attempted to attract young families to stay on the map.
Michael Tristani, 42, said at the time the 1,800-mile move was "an answer to our prayers."
"We don't have to look over our shoulder to see who's going to rob us, or jump out of the bushes to attack us," Tristani said. "Taxes are low, the cost of living is low and the kids enjoy school."
But the family also found a cliquey community that treated them like outsiders. "For my wife, it's been a culture shock," he said.
Rural communities across the Great Plains, fighting a decades-long population decline, are trying a variety of ways to attract outsiders. But the Tristanis show how the efforts can fail even at a time when many people are desperate.
"It's been quite an experience, 50-50 at best," Tristani said. "It hasn't been easy. No one really wants new people here."
May I hazard a completely non-PC question here? Do you think that the Tristanis' race (or nationality or ethnic background or whatever you want to call it, the Tristanis are Italian) is a factor?
Aren't they white?
I'm not even from a big city (in fact my mom is from a small town) but I had similar trouble when I moved to a small town for college. It's not just geographical groups either. Small religious groups, organizations, or ethnic populations can be similarly uninviting. Not exactly sure why that is except that change can be seen as threatening to the group identity.
But Alex does bring up a good point, wonder if it would have been any worse if it were a family of a different race.
Maybe they should move to Wasilla!
This town has had some growth up until the last year or so: it used to have only one stoplight. Now it has 4.
His family may be Italian and his background certainly but he's american.
The only reason I bring this up is that I was born in Scotland an it bugs the hell out of me when someone who has feck all to do with the country and know nothing more than a mel gibson movie about it tells me how awesome it is to meet me because, you know, "I'm scottish too"
As for the point of the article, if you need to advertise and pay for new residents you probably don't deserve them.
The small town thinking of a Great Idea to attract more residents, but not too fond of the Reality of actually getting new residents from Elsewhere.
The new residents from Elsewhere choosing to open the EXACT SAME SHOP as one of the handful of existing shops in town.
The fact that the new residents were handed money in tough economic times while longtime townies got nada.
Bottom line is that in order for such a small town to enact their Great Idea, they pretty much had to have everybody in on the plan. So it's not like it should have been a surprise when the new people showed up and were a little different. I don't think the ethnicity of the family had much to do with it in this case but I could be wrong. It is unfortunate to say this but I can almost guarantee that if the family had been black, Asian, or of some kind of Middle Eastern descent it WOULD have been a factor. Whether the townies care to admit it or not, old-fashioned resentment runs deep and this is some mighty white folk in this neck of the woods. Or plains, I guess.
Religious nuts love small towns because theres less people to stand up to their extremist views, and they get to be control freaks over the rest.
If any place were serious you think they would have set up a Monster-board type Job Search service for small towns by now.
Even Forbes magazine says that you need to subscribe to a local paper to move to a small town.
How the hell are you supposed to find a job in a small town newspaper that only comes out 1-5 times a week with no Sunday edition and apply to those jobs in a timely manner when the paper takes a few days to arrive on your doorstep?
Are you also expected to subscribe to HUNDREDS of small town papers on the off chance that one of these weekly rags is going to have something in your field?
Has anyone ever thought that maybe the reason everyone is not returning to small towns has to do with the idea that no one can find a job there even if one exists?
BTW - I spent my High School years in a small town and I can attest to the xenophobia also. I was abused endlessly and beaten weekly often at the direction and encouragement of the teachers and coaches.
However, people won't be marked "Outsiders" for life. It just takes a few years of being "seen around" town at the grocery store, gas station, or high school football games for people to let you in.
Finally, I don't think their Italian descent has anything to do with their situation. There was a time where my ethnically German mother wasn't allowed to date boys from the Polish town down the highway, but that just doesn't happen anymore. We have had African Americans and Asian Americans in my town for years without them being excluded, much less Italians.
That happens many places still. Lots of towns don't allow their daughters to date men from the next poorer town over, the rioting in Cincinnati ten years ago was related to ethnic German Lutherans controlling the city, and just try to get a date in Holland, MI if you aren't part of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church.
We know he's American, but those small town minds (not all!) still see him as an outsider or (I cringe at this) foreigner. It's unfortunate, but it seems to be going trend....even up here....I lived in a small Northern town and had my share of experience.
White population: 536
Black population: 0
And they had to *pay* someone to live there.
~sigh~
I can tell you in two minutes whether an 'outlander' will merge into the community or not.
The ones who don't make it are all about urban pride. They seem to think that people who live in large cities automatically know how to run the world better than people in small towns, and rarely miss an opportunity to tell anyone listening how to make [wherever they are] more like [wherever they came from]. It happens often enough to be a cliche, and our usual response (once they've gone to spread the light of civilization somewhere else) is, "if where they came from is so great, why did they come here (and why don't they go back)?"
Let's face it.. nobody likes being told how their home is inferior to somewhere else. Those of you who live in large cities would probably dislike someone who moved in from, say, Paris, and could be counted on to tell you how American food is crap at every meal.
That goes double for the local conditions. If you can't handle gravel roads, bad cellphone reception, two channels of TV on a good day, and the nearest shopping mall being 50 miles away, *don't* *move* *here*. It isn't like we keep any of it a secret. There's a direct correlation between poorly maintained roads and $300/yr property taxes. If moving to the area was an informed decision, you knew and accepted the tradeoffs before you came, so please don't bitch about them now. If you didn't know about the tradeoffs, and therefore didn't make an informed decision when moving here, we have no interest in hearing you whine about your own stupid mistake.
Another thing people from large cities tend not to understand is the loss of anonymity. If you live in Chicago or LA, you don't know 99.9% of the people around you at any given time, and they don't know you. If you act like an asshole to the clerk at the gas station, the clerk at McDonald's will probably never know.
In a small town, you're never more than about two degrees of separation away from anyone. I got a black eye in a rather silly way a couple weeks ago, and by the end of a week the voice through the intercom at the drive-through was saying, "so what's this I hear about your eye?"
People who recognize that lack of anonymity tend to be a bit more guarded and private.. it isn't so much unfriendliness as trying to control what gets posted on this week's billboard.
There's also a sort of standoffish politeness that comes from knowing you'll see someone on a regular basis for the next fifteen (or fifty) years. Have you ever stopped going to a restaurant because one of the waiters was a little too aggressively friendly? Now imagine that there are only three restaurants within 50 miles. You tend to move slowly and carefully when running away from your mistakes is expensive.
Yeah, when I moved to this area I spent about three years nodding when nodded to, and not pushing the conversation. Those are the manners appropriate to this kind of place. After a couple years of not seriously pissing anyone off, and sharing the occasional friendly comment, the community decided it could be friendly to me without risking major trouble. Now everyone is teasing me because a little girl tagged me a good one by accident.
Events like that crop up over time, so the question is whether you have the patience to give them time.
If you aren't willing to settle into a small community gradually, you're basically demanding that a few hundred people adapt themselves to you, on your timetable. That comes across as arrogant and rude.. not the kind of person I want to be around for the next fifteen to twenty years.
I can't really understand why you call yourself a great and big nation when everytime you write about someone you specify which nationality one's grandgrandfather was.
It was the same if they were any other American family living in FL and moving to North Dakota.
As an Italian born, raised and living in Italy I am very disappointed by that remark. You really believe all the Italians spend their time like in the Sopranos? Do you really think that after three of four generations grown up in the USA they are like the real Italians?
If you call them Italians what am I? An ape?
This is the first time Neatorama disappoints me.
Bad bad bad.
Does Everyone believe Everything they Read? Mike Stone is the only one I've read so far who really knows what it can be like, that it depends on the people who move there and what their expectations and adapability are. And if the person is friendly, or rude and expects way more than just a few acres of land to be handed to them.
I'm sure this family opening up a coffee shop when there was already one didn't help their cause though.
Seriously, how stupid do you have to be? The town isn't that big, already a coffee shop, hey, let's open up another one! WTH?
Nah, on second thought, let it rot.
I left as soon as I could, so I know small towns are not the stuff of Disney. But I doubt the Tristanis really left a life where people regularly "jump out of the bushes to attack". Every place has it's own issues, I don't think they will ever be happy, regardless where they live.
BY ENLARGE, I THINK the race card is pulled out as a way for people to find closure, or the way to make others pay for some injustice. "I didn't get the job because they don't like blahblah's!", "I should have known better than to trust a blahblah!". It makes it easier to find a reason for why something didn't go that persons' way.
I'm not saying that is the case all the time, but that is what I see more often than not... Then again, I'm pretty sheltered, and think there is two sides to every story!
I commuted home every weekend for 4 years of college to help with the livestock, helped barter our meat for the neighbors milk, eggs, vegetables and so on. When I graduated from college and got engaged to a local man his parents objected because I was a "Californian."
We didn't come in with big city "attitude" Mr.Stone, we were from a small (6K) town in Northern California. My grandparents were ranchers, my great grandparents were ranchers. It didn't matter that I was not from Los Angeles, I was from California. We were outsiders. It didn't matter that we contributed to the community, that we worked to be a part of our new city.
My parents worked hard for their successes, so we were outsiders that took the good jobs from locals. When we did things the hard way we were laughed at. When those things worked out it was dumb luck, or because someone "talked sense" to us. When things didn't work out the way we planned we were stupid city folk. When they did it was because someone told/helped/showed/did it for us.
I think the "racism" discussion here is limited by perception. It isn't race, it's being different. Outside, inside, eye shape, skin color, education, dialect, accent and a hundred other factors all can be basis for exclusion.
Exclusion is power. It's the small people in those small towns.
I'm confused. What do you mean by opposite racism? Plus, the example you described did not describe the Asian Ceiling. I don't think anyone disagreed that the person who worked harder should succeed. However, the Asian Ceiling means your son would need to score 1800, while others would need to score 1600. Plus, your son would need to be extremely active in extracurricular activities while the 1600 person would gain entrance on a score alone. Please clarify.
Ohh. I hear someone knocking......
And the people watch out for you, and are EXTREMELY HOSPITABLE. This is my experience. I wouldn't change living here. I have lived in big metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles, California and Miami. Nothing compares to that small town feeling.
Ive been here for 6 yrs and the people here are about as backward as hill people,
and not even halfway open to you, all the woman have kids all the time and and most people dont know what to do with themselves,
I have yet to have someone actually act like they care or even want to be friends,
most of them ore so mousy or intimidated or close minded its rediculous,
If you are one of those people (me) who has moved to a small town (not a one-light town, but a smaller town in comparison where i came from) and you are feeling excluded, what do you do to cope?
The county where I was raised (pop. 1,200,000 - in florida) was a place where I could enjoy my anonymity. The place where I moved to with my husband and 2 small children in NJ (pop. 10,000) is a place where I am constantly feeling conflicting feelings about. Not only is the anonymity lost, but because of my extremely ethic "look" (hispanic) and background, I and my children have experienced what I can refer to as either racism or exclusion.
Since this is where my husband grew up, he does not experience the same things we do - he is accepted much more openly and cannot relate so much to what I am experiencing.
I have tried being involved (we have been here for 5 years now, 2 years traveling back and forth from Florida, and then 3 years full time) but what I have found is that the small town politics of being involved on even the smallest committee or club is very negative. People either flat out just don't like you, or they don't like how you are doing things. The women can be very cliquish and catty. The kids learn from their parents and exclude your children as uncool. The men align with whatever their wives are doing.
Mind you, not every single citizen of the town is like this, but it is prevalent enough and that's being generous) that I question whether this is the right place for me.
Now the positives: it is a safe town, the schools are good, most of the people who live here are not criminals and they work for a living, there are a handful of people who seem to have no problem accepting an outsider. These are all positives in comparison where I came from. But I definitely feel marginalized about 90% of the time and it is hard to feel good about being here, despite the positives.
As a mom and a human, I have been trying to create a new family here (my family is in Florida) through friendships. It is so hard. It seems people are already where they want to be and don't have room for anyone new.
Any words of wisdom that might help me as a mom, a person, a citizen would be appreciated.
Thanks for reading.
I know this one girl in stockton that was really nice to me, and always said hi to me, but alot of others are cliqish or unfreindly never call you or even act like they care,
Ive got to the point of feeling like I dont need friend's or family,
i see a bum off the street and he is more friendly to me than others here in town,