I just spent Friday night in, watching Pride and Prejudice and eating Nutella and Pita Chips (my favorite guilty pleasure). It took me back to sophomore year of high school, when we were assigned the Austen classic to read. I vaguely remember disliking all the characters for being so ridiculous. But then again, it was Victorian England. The stubbornness, the unnecessary drama, the sidestepping, the delicate games of courtship… It all seems so silly to us now, despite the fact that we still see it all the time. The only thing that’s changed is that people were more eloquent then.
This actually got me thinking about prejudice today. I’m taking a course on the U.S. in the 1960′s, and of course, we’ve spent a lot of time on the Black Freedom Movement. It’s definitely interesting to realize how close we still are to the events that were set in motion over half a century ago. No one can say that prejudice has been erased from this country, just as no one can argue that pride has disappeared from relationships.
I was struck – truly struck – by some of the Malcolm X speeches we read, in which he comments on the fact that American blacks were not given rights to vote or be true citizens of the U.S., even though immigrants that had come to this country only a few years ago. This definitely hit home, and I got to thinking about a conversation I’d had with a friend five years ago on a bus in Spain. “If we could do it,” I’d said, referring to my immigration from Russia, “if we could come from nothing, why can’t they?” I was so naive.
