Minnesota & St. Thomas: Comparative Observations in Home and Place, Part 3: Diversity

Growing up in the Midwest, I was pretty much constantly surrounded by middle-class white people. Sure, my niece is of mixed race… and one of my good high school friends is Korean. The token over-achieving, highly intelligent black kid in school hung with our group of friends occasionally. But really, the dominate culture was white—ranging from the trashy to that of the country club variety, but basically very very white. Except, you know, everyone listened to rap and hip hop. Most of the black people from my hometown lived in the segregated river bottoms known officially as Pleasant Valley but lovingly referred to by all as The Flats. White kids from the North side of town were generally scared to enter The Flats, especially at night. It was the stuff of double-dares, lost bets, juvenile delinquency, scandal, and rebellion.

My small, private Lutheran college in NE Iowa had intense Norwegian roots, and was thus, also an overwhelmingly white community. But thankfully, much more progressive than the town of my youth. There were a handful of African Americans, but racial minorities were mostly a mix of International students. They had a small but solid population on campus, which consisted of specific cafeteria tables, the far corner of the dance bar, and certain sections in the library. I got to know this crowd more personally when I dated a guy from India. I found the encounter with other cultures immensely stimulating, which I’d like to think was part of my attraction to this particular person in the first place.

At my post-college job in Minnesota, all but maybe 5 of the 50 employees were white. And while I truly cared for the majority of my coworkers, I also found them incredibly boring. Little surprised me about their white, working-man lifestyles. But it's no shock that this mash potato culture felt too familiar and stale; I’d been steeped in it my whole life.

In St. Thomas, for the first time, I am a racial minority. And you know what? Not only does it not bother me in the least, but I rather enjoy the change. This became very clear during my Minnesota visit. It became so clear, in fact, that I used it as part of my stock sound bite when people asked what I enjoy about living on the island. The varying reactions to this comment offered great amusement.

In some ways, St Thomas is like a microcosm of the American melting pot myth, but instead of stretching across thousands of square miles of terrain, we’re all smashed together on an island that takes up less space than a small American city. My brother (the first of our clan to live in the VI) has compared St. Thomas to Manhattan, which is perhaps, a more accurate analogy than to the whole of the United States. Either way, we are an absolute mish-mash of cultures here; and it’s hard to avoid each other when you live on a speck.

I enjoy the island’s diversity most when working in the coffee shop downtown. The multitude of accents is a lingual symphony for my ears. My regular customers are local West Indians, some local Frenchies, a lot of Eastern Indians who own and work in jewelry stores, Arabs who own myriad businesses, scads of American transplants from all over the states, some Europeans, tons of people from the Dominican Republic (locally known as “Santos”), Puerto Ricans, Caribbean people from down island, a few from Africa... And this doesn’t even cover my daily encounters with tourists who flock to St. Thomas from all over the world.

Because of this multi-cultural interaction, I know that English people refer to potato chips as “crisps.” Continentals rarely tip because it's not part of the service industry in Europe. “Sorbeto” means “straw” in Spanish. Caribbean people from down island refer to all hot drinks as “tea,” so if they order “chocolate tea,” what they most likely want is hot chocolate.

“Shukron,” means, “thank you,” in Arabic, and we miss our loyal next door customers during Ramadan. They return to the coffee shop after a month looking both slim and cleansed.

Puerto Ricans prefer warm milk in their coffee, so it’s best to ask if they want leché calienté when they order to avoid them bringing you their tiny cups to tell you that it’s frio. (They tend to buy 8oz cups and fill them with equal parts coffee and milk. Since our milk is chilled, this significantly reduces the temperature of their café con lechés.)

Sure, these are all mere tiny (yet helpful) cultural tidbits, but from them I take true delight.

You know something else I just realized about all these cultures living together in St. Thomas? It’s really peaceful for the most part. Yeah, I hear complaints from various residents about ethnic groups other than their own— mostly stemming from frustration, ignorance, and stereotypes. Nothing new there. But the high percentage of violent crime in the Virgin Islands is rarely cross-cultural. Most violence is either domestic in nature, or drug-related and between young men who from h’eh. Okay, so it’s a faint silver lining, but it's visible if you focus hard and squint.

As someone who is curious about diverse cultures and people, living in a place where I frequently engage with a mix of ethnicities is invigorating. What's better is that we can usually talk about (and even laugh at) our differences matter-of-factly without worrying about coming across as racist. I have no problem being identified as the "white girl" at the coffee shop because...well, it's true. People here are often described by their ethnicity or skin color, not because it's the only thing people notice about one another, but rather it's an easy and accurate way to physically describe someone. So why try to vaguely describe a tall, mustached fellow without describing his skin tone as light or dark or white or explain that he's Indian? To people who aren't comfortable talking about race, this can seem rude or distatesful. But my experience here is more that it's simply useful. People have different skin tones. No need to be blind to it. We jus made dat way, ya know.

Obviously, I’m not ready to go back to Whiteville yet…maybe not ever. (Which is not to say that I’m planning to settle here either.) If and when I do return to the states, I won’t be able to live in the suburbs or a small town. For true. While there is diversity in Minneapolis, it’s far more segregated, due in large part to all the available space, which allows for highway chasms to separate neighborhoods.

When my brother spent VI slow season working in Minneapolis, he often bitched about the lack of human color in our midst. He quickly grew weary of white people. Now I finally get it.