When I first moved to Grand Junction, I was concerned about prejudice.  Our town is small and not ethnically diverse.  Would people want to come see a female, Indian surgeon?

Because Grand Junction does not have a large minority population, friends visiting from “culturally diverse” metropolitan areas assume there is more ignorance and prejudice.   I think it’s just the opposite.  You need to have a big group of a minority population to start disliking them.  In “melting pot” cities, people may live next to each other but may not always mingle.  Sometimes, this is because minority groups prefer to congregate together.   They are trying to maintain their culture in a foreign country.  This can, however, lead to misunderstanding and resentment with other groups.  The roots of people disliking each start not on an individual level but disliking a people as a whole.    Those are the places where people say ” The Jamaicans always….” or ” The Indians never…..”.  When you don’t have a large enough population of any minority group, you don’t have enough interactions to make broad sweeping generalizations about the whole.

My experience in Grand Junction has been that I am judged as an individual and not as a member of a minority group.  I recently spoke to a friend who is Caucasian and married to an African-American.  She reports getting more negative comments about her inter-racial marriage in other metropolitan places than here. I’m not naive.  I know racism exists here;  I just think it’s surprisingly lower than any other place where I have lived.

There is one drawback to our lack of diversity.  I miss Ethiopian food.