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oldgar t1_jcw8zf2 wrote

Reply to comment by Zhenja92 in is Blustery's in Vantage actually permanently closed?? by dreams-of-lavender

Have most certainly had first hand experience there, but things change. But low? Rabid racial prejudice is low, my friend, not speaking out against it.

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Zhenja92 t1_jcz89ut wrote

Prejudice is horrible. I totally agree that we have some nasty bigots in our town (as you will find anywhere) and that there is probably more prejudice here than in a more multi-racial community on the westside, but less than in more conservative communities to the east. I also recognize as a community that is mostly white and hispanic, POC may not feel as comfortable as we would like. We have had incidents, such as Nazi pamphlets, but when that has happened we have had community wide movements to push back and assert that those pamphlets are not who we are. Prejudice can take many forms - and, just like it is always wrong to assume negative traits for everyone that is part of a particular gender, race or religion, it is also wrong to condemn everyone in a community because of some bad apples.

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oldgar t1_jczgpmc wrote

Well said. But, those bad apples are the ones that are aggressive to people of color, the whites in the community may rarely see it, because they are not the target. I (w m) Lived in a small town with my wife of Latino descent, the white friends we made there were appalled and surprised to hear of the bigoted things experienced by my wife. To list them in detail would take much time.

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Zhenja92 t1_jczzgbk wrote

Back to my original question - have you or your wife been personally hassled in Ellensburg. I am not denying that there is undoubtedly been issues here - but I think that telling people to avoid coming into to a town to get Ice Cream from a local shop because you/your wife had bad experiences in a totally different community and thus you assume that all small towns are inherently threatening is not that different from the logic of someone who says I once worked with (a black, a woman, a jew, a hispanic) and they didn't do a good job so I don't want to work with (blacks, women, jews, hispanics).

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oldgar t1_jd0z885 wrote

Yes, Ellensburg, but I never said don't go there, only gave a facetious warning to people of color. Wasn't my wife, her brother was driving and I was the passenger in a private parking lot and police pulled us over and stuck him in the back of the police car for twenty minutes, they never said a word to me. I asked him what was going on and he said happens often, let's just go. So we did, but he didn't look happy and his face was very red.

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