When people talk to me about how I go from a tiny town to living in Chicago for school, they always say something like, "That's a big change." And of course it is; city life and country life are obviously different. Today, I want to talk about one of the huge differences that I literally witness, over and over again: close-mindedness.

I could go on about a lot of different topics, but what I really want to get at are social issues like racism, homophobia, transphobia etc..

First, I want to say that I do not want to imply that everyone from a smaller community is racist or homophobic or anything like that, nor would I want to imply that everyone who lives in a bigger, urban area isn't. But I've witnessed the difference in the general attitude of acceptance in both settings. The places with worse attitudes and less acceptance seem to be smaller communities. I think I can explain that in two ways: ignorance and lack of awareness. I differentiate the two because there are those who are conscious of their negative perceptions and prejudices and there are those who aren’t.

I would define lack of awareness as how I first felt when I moved to the city and started attending an urban college and didn’t have a clue why our orientation name tags had a place for us to put our preferred gender pronoun. I had simply never come across the concept of non-binary gender identities. That lack of awareness wasn’t necessarily mine or anyone else’s fault. The problem is, there are many children and young adults that grow up without having the same common knowledge as their counterparts in an urban area.

This lack of awareness lends to children growing into certain beliefs without ever evaluating them with a broader worldview in mind. (This is especially the case when they remain sheltered by their community and never come into experiences outside the environment they grew up by moving or traveling). For example, there are still those who say, “that’s gay,” as an insult. There are those, many in fact, that are taught to have negative feelings towards Mexicans, African Americans, Muslims and other races or religions. Those who, without thinking about it, feel comforted by the fact that in the town they live in, virtually everyone is white and middle-class.

After living in Chicago for the school year, I came back for the summer and thought about how weird it is that people can be so used to everyone being the same that most subconsciously think that’s the way it should be. It seems nicer, safer that way. But is it really, or is it like I said, a comfort thing? And, more importantly, is cultural homogeneity what kids should be raised to be comfortable with?

The ignorance I’m talking about is when people, typically those older, are aware of their limited comfort zones. Only, they don’t talk about it like it’s about their own inability to expand their feelings of comfort and acceptance. They talk about it in terms of what’s right and what’s wrong or simply shrug it off as no big deal. What I’m trying to point out is that it is a big deal. They make offensive jokes and share offensive posts on social media. They talk about how they can’t understand this *insert racial slur* when he/she/they/them is talking and they can’t stand it when those people take the good jobs or do the same damn things anybody else wants or needs to do for their families.

Maybe they simply use race as a way to describe a person, but even that would be something I think we should try to break away from - why not discuss personality or events without adding skin color when it isn't relevant? Because the problem with all of this is that kids pick up on those things, hence the subconscious prejudice I was just talking about. I’m not a parent or grandparent obviously, but I just don’t get the idea of passing on hateful doctrines to your kids. If you want them to have better than you do, that starts with their mental attitudes.

Not to sound cliché, but love and acceptance are always going to serve you much better than hatred or bitterness. And just simple awareness, the small act of telling your child that this world literally has all kinds of people and that that is something to celebrate and not be afraid of, is vital. I understand that some concepts, like transgender or gender fluid people, are more recently becoming common and not all parents know enough to explain that to their kids, but even encouraging them to do their own research, to make themselves aware, before they make judgement could change so much.

I want to reiterate that my objective isn’t to condemn small town America or make it sound like we’re the only nation in the world with communities who seem to value their own far above those who are different from their norm. Nor, like I already stated, am I ignoring the fact that prejudice exists within urban areas too. But, it’s an obvious fact that metropolitan areas have a lot more diversity, and because of that I believe they generally have a feeling of more acceptance.

So I’m not writing this to offend anyone; I’m saying what I think needs to be said. I think this needs to be said because of all the hate crimes and discriminatory tragedies that you see every time you turn on the news. The world doesn’t need any more bigotry, no matter how subtle, so let’s stop letting it go in rural communities just because there are less people to be offended by it. I’m offended, and I want to let people know. I also want more people to realize that even if they don’t think they are prejudiced towards anyone, their words and actions could easily say otherwise. I want them to evaluate themselves and change attitudes that need to be changed for the better. I want people, parents, teachers, more politicians even (or especially, given this election), to start realizing that there is a really big world of diverse people out there, and teach their kids to be okay with that. Teach them to learn about it, to take part in it, to welcome everyone’s differences. I want acceptance to be the unconscious habit of more people in smaller communities, regardless of the diversity, or lack thereof, they’re used to seeing on a daily basis.