The anesthesiologist who gave me my cortisone injection Friday had very Middle Eastern first and last names. When I met him in person, I noticed that he looked very northern European and spoke just like a North Dakotan. and I knew then that he was from here. He is a graduate of the UND Medical School.
I don’t think it is very common knowledge that the first established mosque in the US was built in Ross, North Dakota in 1929. Ross is in northwest North Dakota south of Estevan, Saskatchewan. There were a lot of Lebanese and Syrian immigrants to the area in the early 1900’s, and they homesteaded and farmed there in harmony with their Norwegian neighbors. They fought in the US army in the First World War. They intermarried with their neighbors, and many became Lutheran or Catholic. Some remained Muslim, and there were Muslims with Norwegian last names. They all seemed to get along. I read a story by a woman in Ross with a very Norwegian last name who told of her father, a Muslim, who tried his best to maintain some rituals, and who prayed while butchering chickens on the farm. She said “Do you know how long it takes to butcher 50 chickens when you pray before each one?”
Many of the Middle Eastern settlers moved to larger communities during the Depression and Dust Bowl. By 1970 the Mosque had fallen into disrepair and was demolished. There is a small domed structure built on the site in commemoration.
Husband and I had several psychology colleagues who were ND natives with Lebanese/Syrian last names. Every so often you run across folks with Middle Eastern names whose families have been here for generations. What astounds me is how everyone seemed to get along back then, even those diverse groups up in Ross. If they could do it, I have hope we can, too.
How diverse was your community growing up? How about now?
Trail Baboon 
Not very diverse. St. Louis Park in the 1960s and ’70s. We had a small handful of minorities in a graduating class of 800+ in 1973. However, the Jewish population was sizeable. Maybe 30% of the students were Jewish. Everyone seemed to get along with each other reasonably well. I don’t know about the diversity of SLP now. I’m guessing it is far more diverse than it was 50 years ago.
In Owatonna, we have about 4% Somali immigrants, and a sizeable (10-15%?) Hispanic population. I’m guessing most are of Mexican heritage. Typical of southern MN farming towns. In the past decades, Mexicans commonly came up as migrant farmers each growing season, and many ended up staying here permanently.
We have our issues in Owatonna now. Some backlash against LGBTQ folks, as well as some issues that whites seem to have with the “brown” people. Nothing major, just an undercurrent of disdain (this is a fairly Trump-friendly district).
Funny thing is, the older white folks are the ones who seem to have the biggest problems with the minorities. I routinely see high school kids in friend groups of all colors. I think it proves that if you get to know the individual as a person, the prejudice and racism evaporates when you realize you have far more in common with each other than you have differences.
Chris in Owatonna
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Luverne had no diversity at all when I was growing up. In Grade 8 an African American family moved to town, and you would have thought the world had come to an end. Now, I note lots of diversity in photos in the local paper.
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I didn’t see a black person until high school when Ed joined the band. He was pretty cool, which I think (hope?) made it easy on him. He became the drum major. I wonder what his parents had to put up with. Rochester did not seem to be a welcoming place for blacks, with recent talk of housing limitations in the property sales back in the 1920’s- 1970’s even, prohibiting sales to black families. There was one hotel for African Americans- the Avalon. Still here, been several different businesses.
I remember the Hmong immigration and mom was good friends with “Ling” from her work. Ling made egg rolls for our wedding and they were delicious!!
But that was the extent of non-white folks I knew.
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Very diverse. There were Norwegians AND Swedes. Even with two Lutheran churches facing each other across the street. One Norske and one Swede. Of course there were a few outlander Germans like us and Poles and Slovaks, enough to make a good sized Catholic churches facing each. All that was a big deal, the sort of thing Keillor made many jokes about.
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Oh, there was one African man. He lived in our valley. And his African wife. They were fully accepted in the valley but not so much in the town. I never saw her anywhere but at their place, which I was on often. My father and friend Martin helped him out often. He, of course, was referred to as (blank) Joe. They did not have children . He liked talking to me when I was there. He had a collection of sideshow games in trailers. I suppose that is what he had done before they moved to the valley. He was very good with radios and TVs, another reason we were there.
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In the early 1950s my mother taught in Roland, Iowa which was heavily Scandinavian. There was a Swedish Lutheran church and a Norwegian Lutheran Church. She recalled a terrible scandal in town which involved a couple who had a mixed marriage–Norwegian and Swedish. They had to leave town to marry!
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This is where my dad grew up, Jacque, and where my grandparents et al. lived – I spent many Christmases there…
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Moorhead, Minnesota (was)and Franklin, Ohio (current) are pretty much identical race-wise. Very white (96%). Predominantly Protestant. I do have acquaintances just a few blocks over who are Wicca. Hindus operate many small businesses. I have yet to meet any Jewish folks in Franklin. Franklin is very, very Trumpian.
I make a point of personal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. If that means that I’m “woke” (whatever the he’ll that means!) put me down for 100%.
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Owatonna was uniformly white when I went to elementary school there. My family moved to Cannon Lake, west of Faribault, when I was 12. I started at the junior high in Faribault that fall, which was challenging. There were no families of color there either. The first two black families moved to Faribault when I was in senior high. One of those families had two sons in high school who were my age. The other had one son who was also my age (and was a friend of mine). I don’t remember anyone in school saying anything negative about race, but it could be that I was wearing my rose colored glasses.
Later, when I was working at the regional center, Hmong and Vietnamese people came to Faribault in waves. That was when I started noticing racist comments. Latinos followed the Hmong and Vietnamese. As Chris mentioned, Latinos have always come to work here in the summer. They worked in the fields in the hot sun. They lived in Quonset huts on the north edge of Owatonna. My dad provided dental care for them at no cost. They came for the summer, then returned to their homes after the harvest. However, as permanent residents of Faribault, some of them were greeted with hostility. Some families were successful anyway. They were friendly and they worked hard. They started restaurants, which everyone loved, and other businesses.
Somalis came about 15-20 years ago. They’re a large percentage of the Faribault population now. They have an Islamic Center in Faribault. The town itself is now mostly hard right-leaning. Some people are very vocal about their opposition to multiculturalism. I don’t think this lack of tolerance is making America great at all.
Northfield has its element of racism and negativity too, but people from all over the world have been here for decades. The Latino community is strong and valued here. There are many different nationalities and races represented on both college campuses; they’ve been here for decades.
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
My experience is the same as the rest of the comments from people who grew up in Midwestern small towns. There was a college in our town which did attract a few people from other countries, but I am sure those folks felt stared at. I remember very overt racism from some older family members. My great aunts from Central Iowa were pre-occupied with going to Des Moines where they might encounter, “them n****s.” Those folks, in their minds, were responsible for crime. My maternal grandmother referred to black children as “picaninnies” a term she had to explain to me after using it. She was decidedly racist. I do not know how she responded when her first great-great grandchild was mixed race. I found that somewhat satisfying. I still have a set of embroidered dishtowels she owned portraying black children in various stereotypical activities. I do not know what to do with them.
My father’s attitude was most interesting to me. Although he was not raised as a Quaker, his father was. When that Quaker meeting died out in the early 1900s it eventually became an EUB (Evangelical United Brethren-now Methodist) congregation where dad attended. Dad was very accepting of all races and instructed me that I was to treat all races with kindness and acceptance. There were people on both sides of the family tree who were active in the Underground Railroad.
My home town now is much more diverse, with quite a few immigrants working in the meat packing industry. Ihope they are treated well. That is hard, hard work.
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There apparently was lots of animosity between the Czechs and German Russians out here. I know several couples who had a “mixed marriage ” of that sort, and all had relatives who sat at the back of the church and wept in anguish during the services
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Blazing Saddles.
The “we don’t want the Irish” scene is okay but harsh language.
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There were two “foreigners” in Stubbekøbing, my Irish mother and an older English woman who had lived there twenty-five years before mom arrived. Several of the nuns at the boarding school were German and Polish, and lots of the workers, who worked in the sugarbeet fields in the surrounding area, were Polish. I had never seen or met a Black person until I was twelve years old.
When we moved to Lyngby, a suburb of Copenhagen, in 1955 it was predominantly white, it still is. My school, which had about 250 students in all, had one mixed race student. We all knew her name, Manuela, but I didn’t know her or anyone who did.
Most Danes were appalled at the reports about the racial strife in the US in the late fifties and the sixties. At that time there weren’t many immigrants living in Denmark, and when the influx of immigrants started, most were from Eastern European countries. It didn’t take long before all kinds of complaints about these newcomers cropped up. They refused to learn the language, they were blamed for all sorts of petty crimes, they had multiple families living in too small apartments, the food they cooked made the whole building stink, they played their awful music too loudly, and on and on.
Denmark is now a much more diverse nation in terms of skin color, religion, nationality, ethnic backgrounds, etc. with all of the attendant problems of integrating people who don’t share the same cultural values. Danes are turning out to be just a prone to prejudice and intolerance as people everywhere else in the world.
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How to count the ways people decide not to get along. My recent one was a friend of Sandra who told me she will not come to her memorial because our church has declared itself to be open to all, accepting of everyone. We are not that diverse except we have a gay music leader. I know there a few others in the church. Nobody of color at the moment. She seems to be unaware that her church has declared the same thing.
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Jeepers. People.
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An old couple, Warren and Lois, lived and raised their family a couple of houses from ours. Their children attended and graduated from the neighborhood schools, and eventually settled down in the neighborhood. The old couple faithfully attended the same Lutheran church for thirty-five years.
When their unmarried daughter passed away from leukemia about ten years ago, their minister refused to bury her because she had been living with a man to whom she was not married, “living in sin” as he put it. This was a devastating rejection for Warren and Lois, who were both in their early eighties when this happened. I simply can’t fathom what kind of person, let alone a leader of a faith community, could be so judgemental and unforgiving. But apparently they are still out there.
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I grew up mainly in St. Louis, which as a city overall if much more diverse than up here, however, the suburbs were pretty homogeneous back then. My folks were pretty open so we did know a handful of diverse folks, although I wouldn’t call any of them close friends. I didn’t even know what being Jewish was until we moved at the beginning of high school to a predominantly Jewish area. On the Jewish holy days, there wasn’t even any point in going to school. I had my first bagel with cream cheese the first week at that school!
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My first college was about 35% Jewish. It was wonderful for me having been raised by antisemitic parents.
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I don’t know if the proximity to Germany or WWII had anything to do with it, but I grew up completely unaware of anyone being Jewish. This despite the fact that several very well known Danes, including one the most popular female singers at the time, were obviously Jewish. No one ever mentioned it. I was a twenty-six year old junior in college before I realized I had several friends who were Jewish.
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In the Iron Range town where I spent me early years, it was a mix of Finns, Croatians and Swedes, with a few others mixed in, including a very small number of Native Americans. From what I could tell from behavior on the school bus, the Native Americans were not well accepted. My teens were spent in the Minneapolis suburbs and was overwhelmingly white, with some Jewish families. An Ethiopian family moved into the area when I was in high school in the mid 70sand the kids were fairly popular.
I still live in the Minneapolis suburbs, which are more diverse but still majority white. There are quite a few Somalis in the area.
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Moorhead, Minnesota received quite a few Somalis. The ex and I got to meet and associate with many. One gentleman had been an airline pilot. Fluent in English, Italian with a smattering of Russian. He needed dialysis, so I drove him to his appointments. Excellent chess player. His wife was well educated as well and actually helped put a Latin alphabet to the Somali language back in the early 1970’s. I’ve got a few Somali language textbooks. We were the only Anglo people at their son’s wedding. I learned quite a bit about Islam.
I also learned that there is a lot of prejudice among the Somali clans. That’s unfortunate.
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