Folks in these parts, public and private, have been all-a-titter for days now, ever since our fair city “participated” in the National Go Topless Day on Sunday, August 21.  The event certainly had enough exposure — it was the lead story on the local news for three days.  Fall-out from the event is being felt throughout the community — it inspired one woman from Henderson County, 30 miles away, to write to the Asheville Citizen-Times:

REAL MOUNTAIN RESIDENTS DISGUSTED BY STRIP SHOW

I knew the city of Asheville had gone on a downhill slide as far as decency is concerned, but the strip show on Sunday was very degrading and made me glad I had moved from that area.  The real “Land of the Sky” mountain heritage folks are disgusted with all this immoral display. If everyone who is against this would stop shopping in Asheville and write letters to our senator, we might get a law against this sort of thing.  The real natives of Buncombe County would like to have a city with higher standards where we could stroll the streets with our children.

You know, I’m not even going to get into the topless thing here.  A similar event took place in Rochester, NY, 25 years ago, so this is old news to me.  And while the letter-writer offers no evidence she attended the event or was harmed by it, she is free to say what she wants.  What I do find disturbing, though, is her insistence that some people around here are more “real” than others.  I would fall into her not-real category.

This attitude is prevalent here — you hear it and experience it in various forms.   But its essence is that of bigotry, prejudice and fear of outsiders.

I was originally going to say that I hadn’t encountered anything like this while growing up in western Pennsylvania or while living in upstate New York.  True, I don’t recall hearing anyone say, “Those folks aren’t real Pennsylvanians.”  But I do know there are “outsiders” in those places too, people made to feel they don’t belong, because they are black, or poor, or Jewish, or Italian, or Mexican, or gay… the reasons are endless, aren’t they?

By accident of birth, I have always had the privilege of being part of the dominant culture, until now.  I am not about to put the prejudice and hostility shown to transplants like me on the same footing as racism, but it is part of that continuum.  It is unsettling to be on the receiving end of prejudice, and it is hard to intellectualize it away.  It eats at you, at times.

By the way, the topless story was bounced from the local news today.  Tonight’s lead story: some parents are upset that students are not saying “The Pledge of Allegiance” every day.  This is the little town I live in.