Ethnicity of Idaho

Living in Boise for most of my life I have seen some outrageous and messed up things. I’ve seen violence, cruelty, and outright insanity from people. I have been witness to more than one shooting in the heart of downtown Boise, I hear about gang problems and murders and robberies almost weekly from the next town over in Nampa. There are people here walking the streets free that anywhere else in the country would be locked up as a completely insane person. However I can safely say that I don’t recall having ever seen or heard any of these things occur in the name of racism or prejudice; this isn’t to say that I haven’t heard people say prejudiced or racial statements though. My community is strange, you can live somewhere and never interact with your neighbors, but if you were to move one block down suddenly you are best friends with every one of them.

We have a very ethnic community as well, a large Hispanic population, as well as a rather sizable Korean population; we have a high level of refugees from many different countries that live with us as well. While I remember hearing some rather cruel statements from people every time we would get an influx of refugees from somewhere, they would usually die down rather quickly.

I know that Idaho used to have a large problem with white supremacists. I also know that its presence is still quite strong, though it stays relatively hidden and thinned out. I remember in high school that they had a march right down the middle of the city to the capitol building, I hear about them having rallies every now and then as well . . . but no hate crimes, no murders in the name of the Aryan race, no Anti-Semitism crimes, just a lot of hate for individuals.

I can’t say that members of my community even look like me really as far as racial attributes go, as I stated before, we have a very ethnic community. In school I had friends from many backgrounds; Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, German, Middle eastern, Icelandic, Swedish,...