24)   Diversity . . . or Lack of It

Difficult to be a Minority Student in the 1990s

(Nate Colon)

Coming here from Columbus was a very hard transition for me for the simple fact that I’d grown up in a school where I was actually in the majority and to move to a school where you become the minority is kind of difficult.  (Ethnically I’m half Puerto Rican and then like a quarter of a European mutt and then I have Indian in me too -- Choctaw Indian.)  Not to mention I had a different attitude than most of the kids here.  More of the kids were laid back.  I was more aggressive like an inner city school youth usually is.  And it took me a while to adjust.  Of course, I didn’t have very many friends when I came here because I was a pretty hostile kid.  Well eventually I learned to adjust and started making friends and everything.  As soon as I got into sports, that made it easier.

Granville Kids Not Exposed to Ethnic Diversity

(Anne Ormond)

One of the things that we need to think about in this town is some way to encourage diversity.  We need to try to bring in people from different ethnic groups.  For instance, I think we’re an intimidating community for a black couple.  If they start asking me as a realtor if there are any black families in Granville, there are very, very few.  So I think we need to work on somehow making our community more accessible, or more friendly to people from other backgrounds.  Another example, I had one woman ask me very pointedly if there were many Jewish families in the area.  And I said, well I know quite a few Jewish families, and there is a synagogue in Newark but there is not one in Granville.

It does make you stop and think, we do raise our children in sort of an unusual situation?  And I know I certainly was not aware of other cultures, other ethnic situations, growing up here.  Although there can be some advantage to being raised in an area where you aren’t exposed to ethnic tensions.  For example, my husband was raised in Brooklyn, New York.  And the Irish were on this block, and the Jews were on this block, and the Italians were over here, and they all hated each other.  Here we didn’t grow up with that hate.  And we didn’t know that we were supposed to hate other cultures, we didn’t develop that.  But on the other hand it is a little isolated, not the real world in some ways.

Being Jewish in Granville

(Arnold Joseph)

We’ve had some Orthodox Jews here who haven’t stayed very long.  I practice to some extent.  There is a synagogue in Newark and I participate there sometimes during holidays, when I’m in the area (often I’m not.)  But obviously, I don’t keep kosher.  So that being Jewish is an ethnic thing primarily.  The religious aspect does not preoccupy me exceptionally.  And most Jews here are more or less like me.  I know some who are much more devout than I am, and others who might as well not be Jewish.

Growing Up Jewish in Granville

(Rochelle Steinberg)

We are a Jewish family and we raised our children as Jews to the best that we were able to living in this small town.  And it did present some big challenges and some significant difficulties for our kids as well as for the family.  Both of our children experienced anti-Semitism from other kids in school.  And they saw other forms of overt, ugly kind of prejudice.  We had swastikas painted on our driveway.  We were out there washing it down; and our neighbor came out to help us.  This was directed at my daughter when she was in high school. 

When my son Greg was in the primary grades, different teachers each year for about three years would call and ask my husband if he would come in to the class and explain the holiday of Hanukah.  Sometimes I would make little potato latkes so the children could try them.  Each year that my husband would do this for my son’s class, about two weeks later, one particular kid would just be unmercilessly vicious to our son, calling him all kinds of names, all because Greg was Jewish.  Then it would die down because of the Christmas break.  They’d come back from break and that was the end of it.  But then the next year, it was almost as if Jules going into the class would remind the kid that he needed to start picking on Greg again. 

An Asian Boy is Target of Torments

(Rochelle Steinberg)

Then when Greg in the 7^th grade, there was an Asian boy in his class.  They had a substitute teacher one day and some of the children started to pick on the boy.  And the substitute just couldn’t control the class.  (And this is from my son, who heard it from Bret Wilhelm who was his best friend and Bret was in the class.) 

The children had made like a circle around the boy and were tormenting him, calling him all kinds of names.  And I remember Greg coming home and saying, “I’m so proud of Bret, I’m so happy he’s my best friend!” because Bret was the only kid in the class, according to Greg, who walked into the middle of the circle, put his arm around the boy and said, “ He’s my friend” and kind of tried to align himself with this boy.  Then I said to my son, “I bet the ringleader was so-and-so.”   And Greg said, “How did you know?”  And I said, “Because he’s the kid who was doing that to you when you were in the 2^nd and 3^rd grade.  That’s the same boy.  Now he’s picks on somebody else because they are different.”

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